Qimonda offloads 200mm Richmond ops to Aussie firm

December 6, 2007 – Days after announcing it will reduce its 200mm manufacturing capacities in order to focus on 300mm work, Qimonda AG has sold $289M worth of 200mm chip equipment from its operations in Richmond, VA to Australian firm Macquarie Electronics.

The companies say the sale and leaseback agreement, touted as one of North America’s biggest ever such deals, will give Qimonda additional resources to target strategic objectives, presumably the aforementioned focus on 300mm leading-edge chipmaking activities.

Days ago Qimonda said it would reduce 200mm wafer starts by 15% at its Richmond facilities while switching capacity from 110nm to 80nm, and would use the remaining 200mm capacity for legacy products rather than DRAM. The company also plans to discontinue 200mm manufacturing and capacity at former parent Infineon in Germany as well as contract partners Winbond and SMIC. The moves are expected to increase Qimonda’s 300mm mix to about 90% by the end of the current fiscal year.

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