Chip Materials Maker Goes Into Debt Rather Than Raise Prices
- Fuso Chemical says lifting prices would be betraying customers
- Osaka firm dominates in chip silica but struggles with capex
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One of the chipmaking industry’s small but indispensable suppliers is sinking deeper in debt because it’s refusing to raise prices to cover mounting capex costs.
Osaka-based Fuso Chemical Co. is bearing the cost to help churn out bigger volumes of sophisticated chips without asking customers for more. That’s despite holding a more than 90% share of the world’s silica used to polish silicon wafers and counting deep-pocketed heavyweights Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Samsung Electronics Co. and Intel Corp. as customers.