Manufacturing & contract electronics

Powertech orders US$34 million of gear from Lam's panel hub

The seller's Salzburg site focuses on panel-level packaging tools, though Powertech's filing doesn't say which line they will serve.

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Cbot Crew

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Bar chart of Powertech's four packaging-equipment orders by seller, with filing dates; the Lam Research order is the largest.

Powertech Technology (力成), a Taiwanese chip packaging and test company, has ordered NT$1.12 billion (about US$34 million) of packaging equipment and parts from Lam Research's unit in Salzburg, Austria. It is the largest of four packaging-equipment orders Powertech has disclosed since Oct. 5, worth about NT$3.1 billion (about US$95 million) in all by our calculation. Lam says the Salzburg site focuses on panel-level packaging, a way of processing chips on large square panels instead of round wafers.

Powertech, based in Hsinchu County, Taiwan, describes the purchase in a Nov. 5 filing only as one lot "for operations and production," bought from July 27 to Nov. 5, without naming the production line it will serve. The other three, by filing date, came from two Taiwanese suppliers, one of them covered here in October, and US-based Onto Innovation:

  • Contrel Technology (東捷科技) of Tainan, Taiwan: NT$559.7 million (about US$17 million), Oct. 5
  • Onto Innovation: NT$738.6 million (about US$23 million), Oct. 19
  • Horng Terng (竑騰科技) of Kaohsiung, Taiwan: NT$687.7 million (about US$21 million), Oct. 29

Lam Research, a California-based maker of chipmaking tools, officially opened a research and production site in Salzburg in May, built on a local equipment maker it bought in 2022. It is Lam's first research and development site for wet chemical processing of panels, the Austrian Business Agency said. Wet processing uses liquid chemicals to clean and prepare chip materials, Reuters reported. Square panels waste less material at the edges than round wafers, Reuters said.

Panels are Powertech's own priority. Its chairman said in October 2025 that it would invest US$1 billion in 2026 to expand fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP), according to TechNews (科技新報). In July, he said its FOPLP project for AMD's AI chips was on track for volume production by mid-2027, and equipment for an initial capacity of about 2,000 panels was ready, according to Anue (鉅亨網). Such equipment takes about a year on average to arrive, he said.

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Editor: Ian Lamont

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