Kirk here. The high-tech news keeps rolling in. This article is about a second image-sensor manufacturing facility to be built by Sony in Kumamoto:
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20230623/p2g/00m/0bu/046000c
“The plant, which is expected to produce smartphone sensors, will be built on a 270,000-square-meter site it plans to acquire this year in Koshi in the southwestern Japan prefecture, Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corp. President Terushi Shimizu told reporters.”
The article doesn’t mention that Sony already has a plant here but we’ve discussed the existing plant on this page several times in the past. Here’s a link to a major article on it:
Inside Sony Kumamoto: A rare glimpse inside Sony’s super-secret sensor factory https://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2017/09/05/sony-kumamoto-sensor-factory-tour-a-rare-glimpse?fbclid=IwAR2yfgcmaxwDXaXG_RdUMrRpim_XiXSqXiSGjnmklz_1Q985YU7SHvVOqdg
And, a visit to that plant was one reason for Apple CEO Tim Cook’s recent trip to Kumamoto:
So, two big TSMC plants and two big Sony plants. This has got to be a huge boost to the local economy. And, of course, there will be some associated problems (traffic jams, increased cost of living in some areas, etc.).
By the way, I was trying to wrap my head around just how big 270,000 square meters is so I asked Google to give me the square root of the number. That turns out to be about 500 – so we can imagine a square facility that is 500 meters by 500 meters. That strikes me a pretty darn big.
