U.S. unit Allegro MicroSystems has set up the new facility in Saraburi Province, north of Bangkok. It has constructed a building with a clean room -- a sterile environment used in chip production -- and will bring in production equipment gradually. The plant will be brought online in stages starting in October.

For the earlier part of the process, involving forming chips onto wafers, Sanken subsidiary Polar Semiconductor plans to spend the equivalent of about 1 billion yen to lift capacity by 10% at a factory in the U.S. state of Minnesota. The new Thai plant has been built in conjunction with this production increase. Sanken will also upgrade equipment at a plant in Manila. It plans to use these Southeast Asian sites for late-stage processes, making it easier to ship to markets worldwide.

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