Samsung Electronics has broken ground on a 6 trillion won ($4.48 billion) high-bandwidth memory packaging plant in Asan, South Korea, expanding a key part of Asia’s supply chain for artificial intelligence servers.
The new facility at Samsung’s Onyang campus will add advanced packaging capacity for HBM, which combines stacked memory dies with high-speed connections for AI accelerators. South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources announced the groundbreaking on November 12 as the first construction project under the government’s regional industrial mega-project program.
Samsung plans to follow the 6 trillion won construction investment with about 40 trillion won in advanced equipment installed in stages, taking the medium- and long-term investment associated with the Onyang HBM expansion to roughly 46 trillion won. The new line is scheduled to begin operations in June 2028, a year earlier than previously planned.
The facility will have three clean-room floors covering about 31,000 square meters. Samsung is bringing the opening forward as demand rises for server memory used in AI systems. The company said during its third-quarter earnings announcement that it had completed negotiations over HBM supply volumes for 2027 while customers continued to seek additional supply, Reuters reported.
Advanced packaging is a separate manufacturing step from producing memory wafers. It connects stacked memory with processors and other components, making packaging capacity an important constraint on finished HBM supply.
Chungcheong manufacturing expansion
The Onyang project is part of a broader investment program across South Korea’s Chungcheong region. The ministry said Samsung Electro-Mechanics is investing 8 trillion won in package-substrate production for graphics processors and central processing units, while Samsung Display is investing 67 trillion won in an 8.6-generation production line for information technology displays.
Samsung Electro-Mechanics separately disclosed in September that it would invest 4.27 trillion won in South Korea and 2.51 trillion won in Vietnam to expand flip-chip ball grid array substrates for AI servers and other high-performance computing applications. That expansion is scheduled to start mass production in September 2028.
The South Korean government said it would support the new industrial projects by coordinating permits and helping secure electricity, water and transport infrastructure. It also identified 112 materials, components and equipment suppliers with additional investment plans totaling about 23.6 trillion won around the Chungcheong projects.
Samsung has not disclosed the new Onyang plant’s planned output capacity, customer commitments or expected financial returns. The investment will be deployed over several years, with the 40 trillion won equipment component following the construction spending in phases.
Samsung Electro-Mechanics to invest $4.9B in AI-chip substrates, including $1.8B for Vietnam