Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology said on Wednesday that a Covid-19 lockdown in the Chinese city of Xi’an would lead to delays in the supply of NAND memory chips.
South Korea-based said it would make changes at its Xi’an manufacturing facilities for NAND flash memory chips, used for data storage in data centres, smartphones and other tech gadgets.
“We have decided to temporarily adjust operations at our manufacturing facilities in Xi’an,” the company said in a statement, without providing details.
Analysts said chips made in Samsung’s Xi’an NAND plant mainly go to China with limited shipments heading overseas.
Some of the biggest demand for the kind of chips made in the plant come from Chinese server companies, they added.
The US-based Micron, one of the world’s biggest memory chip suppliers, said the stringent pandemic-related restrictions, which went into effect earlier this month, are increasingly difficult to mitigate and had resulted in thinner staffing at its Xi’an facility.
“We are tapping our global supply chain, including our subcontractor partners, to help service our customers for these DRAM products,” Micron said in a blog post.
“We project that these efforts will allow us to meet most of our customer demand, however there may be some near-term delays as we activate our network,” the company said.
Micron added that it was working to minimise the risk of virus transmission and had employed measures including physical distancing and on-site testing and was encouraging vaccination.
Chinese officials have imposed tough curbs on travel within and leaving Xi’an from December 23, in line with Beijing’s drive to immediately contain outbreaks as they appear.
- Reuters with additional editing by George Russell
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