The effect of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan on the local chip industry is becoming apparent.
This week, Renesas Electronics, which was forced to close its main Naka fab after the disaster in March, has reported a 29% year-on-year fall in revenues from its semiconductor business in the first quarter, ending in June.
Renesas Electronics faced a major disruption in chip production in March following the earthquake.
It now expects to return to normal supply levels in Q3.
“We are not staring at a crisis we are managing the supply chain,” Robert Green president and CEO of Renesas Europe, told Electronics Weekly in June.
By April Renesas had seven of its eight Japanese facilities back in operation.
The big challenge for Renesas has been working to get its large Naka wafer fab back to operational levels.
But, according to Green, the Naka fab, which represented 15% of the company’s total production, is still a number of months away from full production.
First wafers were put through the fab in June.
The company has moved production from the Naka fab to other Renesas fabs and to foundries to help maintain the supply chain.
According to Green, by August a combination of outsourcing production and restarted production at Naka will see the fab meeting 50% of pre-quake levels.
“We will be back to 100% in October,” said Green.
But he admitted there are areas where the supply is “tight”.
In the three months April to June sales revenues fell to 207.23 billion yen, the impact was a net loss of 33.2 billion yen for the quarter.
The semiconductor maker also expects the impact of disrupted production following the earthquake to continue through the rest of the year.
It has decided to keep many of its plants operating during the midmonth Japanese Bon holidays to address product shortages.