SK Hynix, the world’s second biggest maker of memory chips, is in damage control mode, quite literally. A blaze gutted parts of one of its plants in Wuxi, China, but the company is now trying to reassure the market by saying that damage was largely superficial.
The memory maker claims supply volume will not be affected, as there was no major damage to production equipment. It looked spectacular, but luckily the blaze doesn’t appear to have done much damage. One person suffered a minor injury and the company insists it will resume operations “in a short time period”.
However, the world was watching for good reason. The fab in question produces an estimated 15 percent of the world’s DRAM. Any extended outage would have had a massive effect on supply and prices. Luckily, SK Hynix insists the market will not be affected and the supply chain has nothing to worry about. Furthermore, the company says there is no material damage to any fab equipment in the clean room
The fire started yesterday afternoon and it took almost two hours to extinguish. What made it look a lot worse to onlookers was the fact that it churned out a lot of black smoke, which was concentrated in air purification facilities, which pretty much saved the plant but made the whole incident look a lot more ominous.
