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| ASM CEO Benjamin Loh speaks during a press conference at Josun Palace hotel in southern Seoul, Tuesday. Courtesy of ASM |
By Park Jae-hyuk
ASM will hire around 200 additional employees in Korea over the next three to five years, following its plan announced earlier this year to invest $100 million to build a second manufacturing and R&D facility next to an existing one in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, the Dutch semiconductor equipment supplier said Tuesday.
The company, which has around 460 employees in Korea, unveiled the hiring plan at its first press conference here held a day before the groundbreaking ceremony for the new facility.
This also came three months after ASM signed a memorandum of understanding with the Korean government to expand its operation here. According to ASM, the second plant will be built by 2025 and will be 50 percent larger in size than the first one, in order to double the space for R&D and triple the space for manufacturing.
Emphasizing that Korea is one of the three most important markets for the Dutch firm along with the U.S. and Singapore, ASM CEO Benjamin Loh promised to continue the company's expansion in Korea ― the only country accommodating the company's plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD) manufacturing plant.
"We all know that semiconductor is a big industry here in Korea," he said. "Two of the top 10 global semiconductor companies are based in Korea, and they are our customers."
Loh also noted that ASM has provided Korean engineers with decent jobs, as it has focused on both R&D and manufacturing in Korea, unlike most other semiconductor equipment makers.
The ASM CEO, however, remained cautious about mentioning additional investment plans in Korea, saying that it depends on how much the company's business and activities grow.
In response to a question about Washington's recent restrictions on the exportation of semiconductor equipment to China, he said that his company's latest expansion in Korea is irrelevant to the current situation between the world's two largest economies.
He was also confident that ASM will continue to outperform its Korean competitors for a long time, despite the Korean government's efforts to nurture the nation's materials, components and equipment industries.
"We have a very solid reputation and a market share as far as ALD is concerned," he said. "For the local competitors to catch up, I will not say this in terms of number of years, but it will take very significant effort."
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