The devastatingly powerful earthquake that hit Japan’s west coast on New Year’s Day has caused a great deal of human tragedy. It also looks like there could be consequences for PC component supplies, as Toshiba has announced a NAND fab closure while it completes safety assessments.
TrendForce also noted that Taiyo Yuden, Tower, Shin-Etsu, GlobalWafers, and TPSCo have also temporarily halted semiconductor product manufacturing. It wouldn’t be surprising to see both supply and price impacts going forward.
With the violent and dramatic swaying and shaking inflicted upon structures due to the magnitude 7.5 earthquake, it is wise to survey them to check for damage. In its news center statement, Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage says that its Nomi City, Ishikawa Prefecture fab is currently out of action, awaiting the completion of a thorough assessment.
Toshiba’s statement stresses that all employees who came to work on the day of the 7.5 earthquake have been confirmed to be safe and well. It is still trying to contact some employees on vacation to check their well-being.
Looking at TrendForce’s map of the affected semiconductor makers, Toshiba’s Kaga location (above) might be one of the closest to the epicenter of the 7.5 earthquake. Naturally, Toshiba is currently carefully “checking damage to infrastructure and production lines.” We don’t have any preliminary information regarding the scale of damage to the fab. Thus, we don’t know if Toshiba is checking out of pure caution or if there was some serious visible damage done to its buildings or machinery. An update is promised for 5pm Japan time on Friday (3am EST, Friday), so we hope things will become clearer then.
On Friday, we cautiously expect a schedule for resuming production will also become clear. Toshiba currently states that it will make a decision on resuming “as soon as assessments on status of production lines is completed.”
Overall, there seems to be upward pricing pressure on NAND / storage as we start 2024. Firms began to intentionally restrict NAND flowing from their fabs in H2 2023 to try and prop up pricing and this seems to be working, for now. In November, there were multiple reports of NAND shortages on the horizon. Pressure on both the materials side and on the costs of production side were to blame for slimmer supplies, we heard.
The NAND market is complex, though, and simultaneously some factors push prices down, such as more efficient and denser NAND on the way for higher capacity devices at better prices. New China NAND fabs coming online with advanced and competitive NAND chips might also help keep storage prices down.
Time will tell if the temporary closure of the Toshiba fab has a significant impact on NAND availability and pricing, or whether it is just a drop in the ocean.
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