Wuxi Plating Plant Fire- Learn More Here

On January 6th, 2023, a fire took place at a Welnew plating plant in Wuxi, China. The fire has been extinguished, and no casualties have been reported.

Wuxi Welnew Microelectronics (“Welnew”) is a plating supplier founded on July 18, 2001, in the Yangtze River Delta region by Hainan Huayou Investment and Hong Kong Huide Technology.

Currently, they state they have 60% of the market share and have 25 electroplating production lines in Pure Sn, SnBi, SnCu, L/F Ag, ZnNi, and more. Welnew is a sub-tier supplier to several semiconductor manufacturers including Infineon, Vishay, BOSCH, and OSRAM.

The following is information that has been released to date:

Impacted Commodities Include:

MOSFETs (medium to high voltage) – confirmed

RF Small Signal (potential)

LED Drivers (potential)

and others to be determined

Impacted Tier-1 Suppliers Include:

Infineon: Released a statement about the fire informing customers that the plating lines which support the Infineon site in Wuxi were severely damaged by the fire and that their manufacturing partner will not be able to provide services to Infineon until further notice. They are in close exchange with the affected supplier and are currently assessing the impact on delivery. 

Vishay: Released a statement about the incident informing customers that the plating subcon of Vishay Siliconix is impacted and that they expect delivery interruptions. Currently, all the production activities in the Welnew Wuxi plant have been suspended.

The necessary equipment setup and qualification are estimated to take up to 5 months to get completed and ready for normal production in May 2023. During this period, Vishay expects delivery interruptions in January and February. While Welnew Shanghai is getting ready for production, the Vishay Tianjin plant will offer support as the alternative backup plating site to minimize the impact as much as possible.

Other Potential Tier -1 Impacted Suppliers which have not made announcements yet include:

OSRAM – High chance of disruption

BOSCH – High chance of disruption

Alpha & Omega Semiconductor – High chance of disruption

onsemi – High chance of disruption

Renesas – manufactures MOSFETS – Potential chance of disruption

Toshiba – manufactures MOSFETS – Potential chance of disruption

Seiko Epson – Potential chance of disruption

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