Samsung Electronics is to invest US$14.7bn (€11.2bn) on a new chip facility in its home country South Korea. The venture marks the largest single investment in a plant by the tech giant ever.
Reuters reports that the new facility will be located in Pyeongtaek, a city 75 kilometres south of Seoul.
The development is being viewed as an attempt by the company to boost its semiconductor business as its dominance in the smartphone market decreases. An operating profit report for April-June revealed that Samsung’s mobile division fell in annual terms for the second straight quarter.
The company said the plant is to create 150,000 jobs (about a third of Pyeongtaek’s population), and will produce either logic or memory chips.
“Our investment into the new fabrication plant will significantly influence the shaping of Samsung’s future semiconductor business,” Kwon Oh Hyun, vice-chairman and CEO of Samsung Electronics, said in a statement.
Construction will begin next year with the facility set to open in 2017.
Last month, a report revealed that Samsung Electronics employs a workforce of about 275,000, meaning the company actually has more employees than Microsoft (99,000), Apple (80,300) and Google (47,756) combined.
