Fire in Wuxi Plant

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 to date.  

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. Wuxi states that 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 which have been slowly releasing information about the impact of the fire on some key commodities. The commodities which are potentially impacted include MOSFETs, RF Small Signal, LED Drivers.  

Infineon has 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. Their team has immediately activated short- and mid-term mitigation plans and working diligently on resolving this critical supply situation. Delivery plans will be updated by end of CW3 and affected customers will be informed individually through the established channels.

• Impacted packaging include:
  – SOT Package

Vishay has 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. Mitigation plans have been set in motion, and Vishay Siliconix is cooperating closely with Welnew to restart the alternative production line in Welnew Shanghai. 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.  

• Impacted packaging, include:
  – TSOP-6
  – TO-236 (SOT-23)
  – SO-8
  – PowerPAK 1212-8
  – Thin PowerPAK 1212-8
  – PowerPAK SO-8
  – 1206-8 ChipFET.  

Other Potential Tier -1 impacted suppliers which have not made announcements yet include, OSRAM, BOSCH. Alpha & Omega Semiconductor, onsemi, Renesas, Toshiba, and Seiko Epson .

Source: Z2 https://www.z2data.com/insights/fire-in-wuxi