Renesas has one of its two Kumamoto fabs back at pre-earthquake capacity, and says the other resumes production in phases from Wednesday

Renesas has one of its two Kumamoto plants back at full capacity.

The Nishiki Factory in Kuma District restarted in phases on the evening of 29 July, the day after the magnitude 7.1 earthquake, and returned to pre-earthquake production capacity on the morning of 31 July. That is under three days at a plant where ceiling panels had come down and cracks had opened in walls.

The other one is the one to watch.

Kawashiri restarts on Wednesday

At the Kawashiri Factory in Kumamoto city, Renesas says production is scheduled to resume in phases beginning on 5 August, and that it aims to restore pre-earthquake wafer input capacity within approximately three weeks of that restart.

Kawashiri took the worse damage of the two. The company's first notice, on 29 July, recorded cracks in walls and water leakage there, which forced a temporary suspension of the pure water supply. Air conditioning and power were unaffected at both sites and the cleanroom environment was maintained at both.

The restart date has not moved. Renesas named 5 August in its second notice on 30 July and repeated it in the third on 31 July.

What the wording covers

Wafer input capacity is the front of the production line, not the end of it. A fab back to full input in late August is not the same thing as a customer holding finished parts in late August, and none of the three notices makes a claim about output, yield, work in process or delivery dates.

Nor do they quantify anything. There is no figure in any of them for lost production, and no revenue effect has been put on the record.

Why this is running late

The statement above is dated 31 July and this site did not carry it. It runs now because the date it announces is tomorrow, and because the last item published here on these plants, on 29 July, stopped at the damage assessment and left readers with two suspended fabs and no restart date.

Renesas has issued three statements in three days and none since. The company said in each that it would provide further updates as more information became available.