OSRAM Opto Semiconductors today announced completion of the construction of its new LED chip production plant in Penang, Malaysia. Two years after the ground-breaking ceremony in July 2007, the last installation work has been completed and the test phase successfully concluded in the plant which is claimed to be the most modern LED chip production facility in the world. The routine manufacture of LED chips is thus set to run at full speed from now on. The production facility in Penang makes the German company the first LED manufacturer with high-volume chip production facilities in Europe and Asia. The new plant complements the main facility in Regensburg, Germany, which was expanded in 2008. This move will enable the company to respond flexibly to the demand for top quality LEDs at competitive prices in the LED market, which has begun to pick up steeply again.

View of the cleanroom of the LED chip plant in Penang.

Investments of tens of millions of euros, a 35,000-m² facility area and over 220 new jobs – these are the key parameters for the newly constructed cutting-edge manufacturing plant for LED chips – the devices which are poised to become the core products in the lighting systems of the future. Now that the construction phase has been completed and the manufacturing processes have been established for the 4-inch-wafer-based indium gallium nitride semiconductor chips, routine production is now underway. These chips form the basis for the blue, green and white LEDs primarily used in architecture and general lighting, for display backlighting and in mobile terminal devices. Thanks to the LED chip plant, some 220 new jobs have been created in Penang to date. OSRAM Opto Semiconductors employs around 2,600 of its total worldwide workforce of 4,400 at the Malaysian facility.

Dr. Rüdiger Müller, CEO of OSRAM Opto Semiconductors stated: "There is no question that the rise of the LED, which has only just begun, is set to sky-rocket in the coming years. This is why we are pursuing our investment and expansion course consistently and uncompromisingly, even in this difficult economic environment. With our production facilities in Germany and Malaysia, we are now in an ideal starting position in terms of quantity and quality. Regensburg, and now Penang, too, has become the most important global centres of LED technology."

The new production facility – cutting-edge technologies under one roof.