The 12-inch wafer fab jointly built by Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS) and NXP in Singapore has officially opened — good news for Taiwanese manufacturers' overseas footprint and for customers' supply chains.

• The new plant took just 22 months to complete, with trial-production yields already topping 99%. Mass production is expected in the first quarter of 2027, bringing thousands of jobs.
• It will focus on 130- to 40-nanometre power management, analogue and mixed-signal chips, serving automotive, industrial and high-performance computing demand.
• Spreading out production sites is the key point: customers do not want their supply chains staked on a single location, and Singapore has become a landing spot for major manufacturers.
• On the Taiwan stock market, the benchmark index hit a record high above 48,000 ahead of the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday. The market is waiting to see whether the rally can be chased after the break, with exports, export orders and US interest rates the key factors.
• At the same time, TSMC is pushing hard on silicon photonics and CPO packaging to resolve transmission bottlenecks and power consumption in AI data centres, prompting the optical communications supply chain to move in step.

Outlook: The new plant will not contribute capacity until 2027, so in the near term the Taiwan market's focus remains on AI-related stocks and post-holiday fund flows.