Stock news: Chartered Fab 7 utilitization exceeded forecast

Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd said its 775,000 square foot Fab 7 facility will be able to produce up to 30,000 wafers per month when it is fully facilitized. At its current capacity, Fab 7 produces some 15,000 wafers per month. "We will fully ramp up the fab, depending on the market situation," Chartered's vice president of Fab 7 operations Zadig Lam told a press briefing. Lam said the fab is currently 75-78 pct utilized and for the fourth quarter he expects the group's overall utilisation rate to be about 70 pct.. This is the company's first 300 mm or 12-inch wafer facility, which uses 90-nanometer (nm), 65-nm, 0.13-micron and 0.11-micron process technologies, and can be scaled to 45-nm and beyond. Chartered said it plans to ramp up its 45-nm process technology in the third quarter next year. Lam said the company has spent some 3 bln usd building Fab 7, as part of its joint-development collaboration with IBM Corp, Infineon and Samsung. Fab 7 is currently serving major clients like Advanced Micro Devices Inc, IBM Corp, Infineon, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Texas instruments, he added. The group also operates four 200-mm facilities in Singapore.