Samsung Breaks Ground on $33 Billion HBM Packaging Push in Asan

Samsung Electronics will break ground on a 46 trillion won ($33 billion) advanced packaging plant for high-bandwidth memory on September 12, Chairman Jay Y. Lee's opening move in a semiconductor megaproject aimed at South Korea's Chungcheong region. Industry sources confirmed the ceremony date on the 5th.

Lee will visit the Onyang campus in Asan, South Chungcheong Province, next week with a roster of affiliate executives: Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Jun Young-hyun, Samsung Electro-Mechanics President Jang Deok-hyun, Samsung Display President Lee Cheong and Samsung SDI President Choi Joo-sun. The event marks the first concrete step toward turning the region into a hub for next-generation memory back-end processing.

Where does the money come from?

The 46 trillion won is carved out of a larger 113 trillion won investment package Samsung disclosed in July, when the government held a national briefing on advanced industry development at Samsung Display's Asan campus. Officials branded the plan as three megaprojects for a national leap forward. The HBM back-end portion will be spent over the medium to long term.

"Chungcheong, at the heart of the country, will achieve greater growth as a global hub for information technology materials and components," Lee said at the July briefing. "Because the future of the artificial intelligence era depends on the materials and components that power AI, this is directly tied to Samsung's future as well."

What does Onyang Plant No. 5 change?

Onyang Plant No. 5 will be dedicated to HBM production. The campus opened in 1991 as a chip assembly and testing line and currently runs test lines that verify performance and quality before finished semiconductors ship. Until now, advanced packaging work has been concentrated at the Cheonan campus; that role now extends to Onyang.

The scale is easy to picture: once Plant No. 5 is complete, total floor space at Onyang grows about 56%, from 270,000 to 420,000 square meters. Advanced packaging, for context, is the back-end technology that stacks multiple memory chips vertically into a single high-performance semiconductor — the step that turns HBM dies into shippable AI-memory products.

The capacity expansion is not optional. Samsung projects its HBM supply will grow by an average of 52% per year over the next three years, and back-end capacity has to keep pace with that volume.

What else is in the Chungcheong plan?

Samsung has set a target of 250,000 quality jobs by developing Cheonan and Asan into a global base for advanced materials and components. The two other megaprojects break down as follows:

• Samsung Display will invest 67 trillion won in Asan to build a display cluster.
• Samsung SDI will invest 9 trillion won in Cheonan to establish a mother line — a mass-production verification line — for next-generation batteries.

For packaging engineers and equipment suppliers, the message is straightforward: the back-end, long the quieter side of the memory business, is now where a third of Samsung's 113 trillion won commitment is landing — and Onyang, a 33-year-old test campus, is its new center of gravity.