Ministry of Commerce: Problems such as poor shipping and shortage of chip supply are difficult to fundamentally alleviate in the short term

Jiwei Network News On December 16, according to the official website of the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Commerce held a regular press conference, at which Shu Jueting, spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce, said in response to a reporter's question that since the beginning of this year, in the face of the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, China's foreign trade has still shown strong resilience, achieved rapid growth, and is stable and good.

It also said: "At the same time, we are also soberly aware that the current development of foreign trade is still facing many uncertain, unstable and unbalanced factors, the global epidemic situation is repeated, the international situation is complex, shipping is not smooth, chip supply shortage and other issues are difficult to fundamentally alleviate in the short term, the comprehensive cost of enterprises remains high, and foreign trade operations are facing greater pressure." ”

It pointed out that in the next step, we will conscientiously implement the spirit of the Central Economic Work Conference, continue to do a good job in the "six stability" and "six guarantees" work, closely monitor the operation of foreign trade, and take multiple measures to stabilize foreign trade.

On the semiconductor equipment side, recently, the International Semiconductor Industry Association (SEMI) released the "Year-end Total Semiconductor Equipment Forecast Report", which said that the total global semiconductor equipment sales in 2021 will reach 103 billion US dollars, a record high, an increase of 44.7% over 2020. The report also said that the total global semiconductor equipment sales will expand to $114 billion in 2022.

On the front-end (wafer fabrication) side, equipment including wafer processing, in-plant equipment, and reticle equipment will grow by 43.8 percent to $88 billion in 2021; by 12.4 percent to approximately $99 billion in 2022; and by a slight decrease of 0.5 percent to $98.4 billion in 2023.

In terms of back-end (packaging and testing), the global packaging equipment market will increase by 81.7% to $7 billion in 2021, and will continue to grow by 4.4% in 2022, driven by advanced packaging applications. The semiconductor test equipment market will grow by 29.6% to $7.8 billion in 2021 and will continue to grow by 4.9% in 2022, driven by demand for 5G and high-performance computing (HPC) applications.

What is more severe is that despite the shortage of chips, major chip manufacturers are also increasing their efforts to expand production capacity, but from the perspective of the equipment side of the production line, the current performance of equipment manufacturers is very good, and the supply cycle is also extending.

According to the UMC announcement, the Board of Directors has approved the capital budget implementation bill and plans to invest NT$76.273 billion (about 17.5 billion yuan) to meet the demand for capacity expansion.

The company said that the current 28/14nm process equipment delivery time is elongated, and the more sophisticated, the less equipment delivery time of the supplier, the longer it is, up to 30 months, therefore, the company's 17.5 billion yuan expenditure is intended to "start first is strong", and buy the equipment needed for production after 2-3 years in advance.

SMIC also revealed in last month's survey that this year, due to multiple factors such as the approval time of the permit, the delivery of suppliers, and the impact of the epidemic on logistics, the arrival time of equipment to the factory has been delayed. Q4 will further accelerate the implementation of capital expenditure speed and intensity, optimize procurement, logistics, equipment installation and other work, and strive to ensure that next year's expansion is carried out as scheduled.

In addition, from the perspective of the monthly bidding scale of local mainstream manufacturers from January to October, the equipment bidding volume of SMIC Shaoxing, Yangtze River Storage and BYD Semiconductor in September and October has increased significantly. The global shipments of North American semiconductor equipment manufacturers also reached a record low in October. This is undoubtedly conducive to the development of the industry for domestic semiconductor equipment manufacturers. (Proofreading/Wenbiao)