Japan’s Mitsui Kinzoku 5706.T said on Monday it plans to expand production capacity for its high-performance copper foil products beyond 2030 by building a new plant in Malaysia to meet growing demand from the artificial intelligence and chip sectors.
The new plant, to be built on land adjacent to the company’s existing Malaysian facility that it plans to acquire, is expected to start operations in 2031 with a monthly production capacity of 1,200 metric tons of VSP copper foil and 4 million square metres of MicroThin copper foil.
VSP copper foil, used in high-frequency circuit boards for servers, routers and switches, is seeing rising demand as AI infrastructure projects adopt higher grade products.
MicroThin copper foil, used in semiconductor package substrates, optical modules and smartphone motherboards, is also expected to benefit from increasing demand for AI servers, data centres and memory applications, the company said.
The expansion is expected to lift total monthly production capacity to 2,600 tons of VSP foil and 12 million square metres of MicroThin foil by fiscal 2033. Investment details have yet to be decided, a company spokesperson said.
Earlier this month, Mitsui Kinzoku said it will invest about 30 billion yen ($189 million) through fiscal 2030 to expand MicroThin foil production capacity to 8 million square metres per month.
That investment, covering its Ageo plant in Japan and Malaysian subsidiary, accelerates an earlier expansion plan, lifting capacity to 6 million square metres per month in fiscal 2028 before reaching 8 million in fiscal 2030.
It also announced a 7 billion yen investment to expand VSP foil production capacity at its Taiwan and Malaysia plants, raising monthly capacity to 1,400 tons by fiscal 2030 from the previously planned 1,200 tons by fiscal 2028.
($1 = 158.9700 yen)
(Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; editing by Alexandra Hudson)
