On March 19, Renesas Electronics announced the occurrence of a fire on March 19, 2021 at 2:47 am at part of the processes in the N3 Building (300mm line) of Naka Factory (located in Hitachinaka, Ibaraki Prefecture) of Renesas Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd, a wholly-owned manufacturing subsidiary of Renesas. The fire was extinguished at 8:12 am on March 19, 2021.

According to the announcement, although the building was not damaged, some practical equipment (such as pure water supply and air conditioning) and some manufacturing equipment were damaged.

The burned area is approximately 600m2, which is around 5% of the 12,000m2 clean room area of the first floor N3 Building, and the burned manufacturing equipment was 11 units, which is around 2% of the manufacturing equipment of the N3 Building. The impacts to work-in-process is undetermined and Renesas said it will conduct an investigation next week.

Production in the N3 building (300mm production line) is temporarily suspended. Renesas said that with the support of partner companies and manufacturing equipment suppliers, it will clean the interior of the clean room and purchase new equipment to replace the burned-out equipment. Its goal is to resume production within one month.

It is worth noting that Renesas previously stated that the shortage of automotive chips may continue into the second half of 2021. The fire may make the situation worse, because semiconductor manufacturing takes three months, once interrupted by interference, it is quite difficult to restart.