Yesterday, UMC convened a board of directors, announcing an estimated investment of 887 million US dollars to expand the production capacity of the 8 and 12-inch fabs.

UMC said that the 8-inch plant capacity optimization will be mainly invested in its Suzhou subsidiary Hejian Technology, which is expected to expand capacity by 10,000 pieces, while the 12-inch capacity expansion will be placed in Xiamen United Semi, which is expected to expand capacity from 17,000 to 25,000 pieces, plans to increase by nearly 47%.

In addition, UMC also plans to expand Singapore's production capacity to meet market demand.

Overall, next year's spending should not be much different from this year. UMC said that the current 8-inch capacity is still fully loaded, and the 12-inch process is also quite stable, but the utilization rate of advanced processes is lower, and the overall capacity utilization rate may be less than 90% this quarter.