Amid surging chip demand, a €500 million investment by Merck in Taiwan is preparing new semiconductor-materials capacity to bolster supply resilience ahead of 2026 production.
German science and technology company Merck KGaA has opened a new semiconductor-materials production complex in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, marking one of its largest investments in the region.
The 150,000-square-metre facility represents a €500 million outlay and is designed to manufacture thin films, formulation materials and speciality gases used in advanced logic, memory and AI chips.
Merck said the site will create about 150 high-tech jobs and support rising global demand for next-generation semiconductor architectures. Its electronics division described the Kaohsiung campus as the company’s largest semiconductor-materials site worldwide.
The facility has been built to LEED Gold standards and includes manufacturing systems equipped with digital twin technology for process monitoring, optimisation and predictive maintenance. According to the company, renewable energy will supply around half of the site’s annual power needs once fully operational.
The opening advances Merck’s ‘Level Up’ expansion programme, launched in 2021 to increase global capacity for semiconductor-related materials. The group has been investing across several regions over the past few years as chipmakers scale up production for AI workloads and other high-performance applications.
Merck executives said the Kaohsiung plant is intended to improve supply-chain resilience in Asia and provide closer support to customers in Taiwan and the broader Asia-Pacific market. Volume production is expected to begin in 2026, with materials supplied to local and regional chip manufacturers.
The company said the new mega site aligns its production footprint with the semiconductor industry’s shift toward more complex manufacturing requirements.
