Freescale Semiconductor has announced that it will not reopen the seriously damaged manufacturing facility at Sendai, Japan following the recent earthquake.
This brings forward a planned closure of the Sendai wafer fab which was first announced in April 2009.
Prior to the earthquake and tsunami, the company planned to complete the closure of the facility in December 2011.
“The ongoing safety concerns, damage to infrastructure and other basic services in the region, compounded by numerous major aftershocks, prohibit Freescale from returning the facility to an operational level required for wafer fab production in a reasonable timeframe,” said the company.
“In this time of devastating loss for many of our Sendai employees, we want to do what we can to help and to return some sense of stability to their lives,” said Rich Beyer, Freescale’s chairman and CEO.
"To that end, Freescale will compensate them through a salary continuation for an extended period of time, coupled with a comprehensive severance package,” said Beyer.
The Sendai facility produces microcontrollers, analogue ICs and sensors products.
The supplier said it has been building buffer inventory to support end-of-life products and the transfer of production from Sendai to Freescale’s other fabs and outside foundry partners.
“This buffer inventory has been stored in other facilities and was not affected by the events in Japan,” said Freescale.