Shin-Etsu Chemical, the world's largest semiconductor silicon wafer manufacturer, recently released an announcement on its official website, announcing an increase in the sales price of all its silicon wafer products by 10% to 20% from April. This price adjustment is Shin-Etsu Chemical's first price increase in more than three years. The last time the price increase was announced was in November 2017, when Shin-Etsu Chemical announced that starting from January 2018, it would increase the price of all its silicon products by 10% to 20%.

Shin-Etsu Chemical said through its official website that the cost of the main raw material, silicon metal, is rising, and the strong growth in demand in the Chinese market has led to supply shortages and rising production costs. In addition, due to tight supply, the cost of methanol and metallic platinum for catalyst raw materials is also increasing, coupled with the continuous increase in logistics costs and secondary material costs, these factors have put pressure on revenue. With Shin-Etsu Chemical’s efforts to reduce manufacturing costs alone, it has been difficult to absorb these continuously increasing costs, so the prices of all silicon wafer products had to be increased.

According to statistics, as of September 2020, Shin-Etsu Chemical's market share in the global silicon wafer product market is as high as 29.4%, ranking first in the world. Japan's SUMCO (SUMCO) ranked second with a market share of 21.9%. Taiwan's silicon wafer fabs ranked third globally, with a market share of 15.2%. Siltronic AG of Germany ranked fourth with 11.5% market share. South Korea's SK Siltron ranked fifth, with a market share of 11.4%. Among them, it should be noted that Global Wafer has reached its goal for the acquisition of Siltronic AG at the beginning of this month. After the completion of the acquisition in the future, it will become the world's second largest semiconductor silicon wafer manufacturer after Shin-Etsu Chemical.

Since the second half of 2020, the demand in the foundry market has continued to increase, and wafer manufacturing capacity has continued to fall short of demand, driving the demand for semiconductor silicon wafers necessary for wafer manufacturing to increase significantly. However, because semiconductor silicon wafer suppliers have no large-scale expansion actions between 2019 and 2020, the production capacity cannot cope with the increased demand. Market participants estimate that even if production expansion is to be carried out now, it will take at least one and a half years for mass production, which also makes the supply of semiconductor silicon wafers begin to tighten.

According to a research report by the SEMI International Semiconductor Association, the global shipment area of ​​semiconductor silicon wafers in 2020 will only grow by 2.4% compared to 2019. However, by 2021, the growth rate will further double to 5%, and by 2022, the growth rate will increase to 5.3%. The entire growth rate has the opportunity to climb to a record high in 2023.

However, with the tight supply of semiconductor silicon wafers and the increase in the price of upstream silicon materials, Global Wafer has already taken the lead in raising the spot price of 12-inch silicon wafers at the end of 2020, and indicated that other sizes will also be gradually adjusted. rise. Today, Shin-Etsu Chemical, the market leader, has also announced that semiconductor silicon wafers will increase by 10% to 20%. This also means that in the future, other semiconductor silicon wafer manufacturers may soon follow up. , Is also expected to further promote the increase in wafer manufacturing costs, which will make wafer manufacturers pass on cost pressure later, a new round of price increases will be inevitable.