The daily increase exceeds 5,000 cases! Malaysia announced an indefinite blockade, fearing to exacerbate the core shortage crisis...

International e-commerce

Due to the severe epidemic and the daily increase of more than 5,000 cases in the past week, Malaysia has decided to extend the national lockdown indefinitely. The industry is worried that the indefinite blockade may exacerbate the shortage of packaging and testing capacity, aggravate the market situation of chip shortages, and may also have an impact on the global electronics industry chain.

The epidemic in Malaysia is severe, with an average of more than 5,000 new cases per day in the past week. The Malaysian government has decided to extend the national lockdown measures originally scheduled to expire on Monday (June 28) local time indefinitely.

According to real-time statistics from Johns Hopkins University in the United States, as of 11:21 on June 29, Beijing time, there have been a total of 181,386,878 confirmed cases worldwide and a total of 3,928,760 deaths. Among them, Malaysia has confirmed a total of 739,266 cases and a total of 5,001 deaths.

International E-commerce has learned that in the past week, the development of the epidemic situation in the country is not optimistic: an average daily increase of more than 5,000 cases; daily increase of death cases reached double digits. The country's current intensive care unit beds are almost full, and (as of the 27th) only 6.4% of the population has been vaccinated with two doses of vaccination. The Minister of Defense of Malaysia also mentioned in a statement on the evening of the 27th: "(Malaysia) has not yet achieved the conditions for relaxing the blockade measures."

Regarding the unblocking time node, Malaysia did not give a specific time, only saying that "only when the number of new confirmed cases of new crowns has dropped significantly and other prescribed conditions are also met, the blockade measures will be relaxed."

The epidemic continues, severely hurting the local packaging and testing and passive component industries

The “uninvited” new crown virus pneumonia epidemic in early 2020 hit the global economy. Due to the highly globalization of the supply chain, the electronics manufacturing industry was not immune, and the chain was once broken. To this day, countries still suffer from the repeated spread of the epidemic and are forced to "close their country/city".

-Packaging and Testing Industry

The industry knows that packaging and testing is an indispensable part of the chip production process. Relevant data show that Southeast Asia accounts for nearly 27% of the global chip packaging and testing industry, and Malaysia, which accounts for 13% of it, is one of the world's most important semiconductor packaging and testing bases and one of the world's seven largest semiconductor export centers. It is reported that Malaysia's semiconductor packaging and testing business revenue alone in 2019 reached 28.76 billion U.S. dollars (approximately RMB 185.78 billion * 29-day exchange rate).

Up to now, although there has been no news of the production line reduction of the local packaging and testing plant, Malaysia has extended the lock-up period indefinitely, and the speed of import and export customs clearance and transportation time of semiconductor companies' raw materials and chip products has also been affected, which will affect the production capacity of semiconductor products. Go shock.

In addition, in the context of the tightening of global packaging and testing production capacity, earlier this month, the leading packaging and testing factory-ASE Holdings also reported that Q3 again raised the price of packaging and packaging by about 5-10%. Zhang Qiansheng, chairman of ASE Investment Holdings, recently stated that the current packaging and testing production capacity remains at full capacity, especially the demand for wire bonding and packaging is quite strong. The capacity gap is estimated to last for the whole year of this year, and the demand for wire bonding and packaging is far greater than the equipment supply. The shortage of equipment will continue until the end of this year.

On the other hand, at the beginning of the month, KYEC, the largest packaging and testing index factory that became "popular" due to the swarm infection, was located in Miaoli County's largest packaging and testing base for several periods of quarantine and night shifts. However, for this incident, KYEC emphasized that “only 4-6% of the output in June will be affected, and the production capacity of the month will remain unchanged”. In response to lost production, capacity allocation will be used to make up for the loss of production capacity.

In fact, in March of this year, the supply chain had news that the supply of packaging and testing terminals was urgent. According to sources in the supply chain at the time, chip designers are already preparing to negotiate with packaging and testing plants on capacity allocation in 2022.

-Passive component industry

In addition to being an important global semiconductor packaging and testing center, Malaysia is also an important producer of passive components. According to statistics, passive component manufacturers such as Huaxinke, Wangquan, Murata, Nichicon, Nippon Chemicon, Panasonic, Seiko Epson, and Taiyo Yuden also have production bases in Malaysia.

In March last year, Malaysia was "closed" for the first time due to the new crown epidemic. At the request of the government, the production line of passive component manufacturers was suspended for two weeks, which affected the passive component industry including MLCC to a certain extent. This move also affected downstream terminal manufacturers. Brought a certain impact. In May this year, has twice declared local cloth "closed city" (Related reading: " Malaysia" vassal states "influence " , " Malaysia and then blocked " ).

It is worth mentioning that Malaysia also has a complete automobile industry chain, with Honda, Toyota, Changan Automobile, Great Wall Motor and others in the state-owned factories.

Not long ago, due to the need for epidemic prevention, Honda and Toyota responded to the call of the local government to suspend plant production. Earlier, some factories in Toyota and other parts of Honda suffered from production suspension, production reduction, and even "castration" of in-car configuration in Q1 of this year due to the shortage of automotive chips.

-Huaxinke and Kaimei: 60% of employees work normally

"International Electronic Business" has made a series of reports on the Malaysian electronics industry chain. During the "blockade" period, the local government required that the passive device production line can only maintain a low-level manpower operation of 10% to 20%.

However, Taiwan media reported on the 28th that Huaxinke, a major Taiwanese passive component manufacturer with a factory in Malaysia, said that thanks to its subsidiary Kamaya Electric (M) SDN. BHD, which continues to obtain permits to continue operations, 60% of employees and production line personnel Continued production and operation, and some indirect personnel still work at home; Kaimei also stated that the production line was required to reduce load and 60% of the production line employees were allowed to work, emphasizing that it will continue to pay attention to and cooperate with local government control. It is reported that about 60% to 70% of chip resistors from Wangquan, a subsidiary of Kaimei, come from Malaysian factories.

Industry: short-term failure to improve the chip shortage or more serious fear of the electronics industry chain

It is well known in the industry that Q3 is the traditional peak season for the electronics industry, and the demand for components will inevitably increase sharply. Passive components are also an indispensable part of electronic terminals. Malaysia is also one of the most important production locations for passive components. The production projects cover almost all key passive component categories. . The industry pointed out that even if the production lines of local electronics factories allow six people to operate, output will also be affected.

In view of Malaysia's pivotal position in the global electronics industry, the industry expects that the local packaging and testing capacity and the supply of automotive MLCCs, chip resistors, solid capacitors, aluminum capacitors and other categories will be greatly impacted. The owner pointed out that in addition to the blockade once again affecting the local chip industry production and further aggravating the chip shortage market, the global electronics industry chain will be affected to a certain extent. "If the situation does not improve in a short period of time, the impact is expected to be very fast (around September). ) Appearance" .