Recently, it has been rumored in the industry that the semiconductor project “Jinan Quanxin” with an investment scale of RMB 59.8 billion has been unfinished.
According to Jinan Quanxin’s employees, “the company is in a difficult situation, and has started to stop paying wages since April, forcing employees to leave”, and the project has also been suspended. The Jiwei.com report also quoted contractors working on other surrounding projects as saying, “The general contractor has been replaced many times during the construction of this project, which is very rare in the construction industry. Obviously, the project has huge long-term risks.” In addition, Jinan Quanxin “during the replacement of the general contract of the project, there have been many cases of arrears of wages to migrant workers.”
According to data, the Jinan Quanxin project has a total investment of 59.8 billion yuan, and plans to build a wafer manufacturing line with a 12-inch 12nm/7nm process node. The project started construction in the first quarter of 2019. The construction site is located in Jinan Airport Economic Zone, with a land area of 39 hectares. The total investment is 59 billion yuan. The project is constructed in two phases. The first phase invests 23 billion yuan to build a 12-inch 12nm production line with a monthly production capacity of 7,000 pieces; the second phase invests 26 billion yuan to expand the monthly production capacity of 23,000 pieces of 12nm logic chips; It will invest 10 billion yuan in the period to increase the 7nm production capacity of 10,000 pieces.
In terms of equity structure, according to public information, the four major shareholders of Jinan Quanxin are Jinan Jixin Industry Development Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership), Yixin Integrated Technology (Zhuhai) Co., Ltd., Jinan High-tech Holding Group Co., Ltd. and Jinan Industrial Development Investment Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership), both of which are affiliated to Jinan State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.
According to the EIA report of this project, Quanxin boasted that Haikou would build a 12nm factory with an annual output of 480,000 wafers and 2,400 masks. With the strong assistance of the Jinan government, the factory started construction in the first quarter of 2019. However, after more than two years of construction, its 12-inch plant has just completed piling. Now the project is suspended and employees are planned to be laid off. In addition, a large amount of equipment has been ordered and a deposit of about 1.7 billion yuan has been paid, which has become a hot hand for the Jinan government. potato.
The report quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that the 1.7 billion devices included three ASML lithography machines. At present, all the ordered equipment has not been delivered yet. If Quanxin fails to pay the final payment and breaks the contract, the equipment manufacturer will deduct about 17% of the liquidated damages from the deposit.
It is particularly worth noting that Cao Shan, the controlling shareholder behind Yixin Integration, which holds about 41.18% of the equity of Jinan Quanxin, was the behind-the-scenes controller of Wuhan Hongxin, which was already unfinished. According to the data, the controlling shareholder of Wuhan Hongxin was once the blueprint of Beijing Light. Cao Shan was the major shareholder and legal representative of Beijing Guangliang Blueprint, but Cao Shan withdrew from Beijing Guangliang Blueprint in January 2019 and no longer serves as the legal representative and executive director.
According to the report of Jiwei.com, the real identity of “Cao Shan” is actually Bao Enbao, chairman of Anhui Dianchuang Electronics. However, Bao Enbao said that “Cao Shan” who registered for business in the Hongxin and Quanxin projects was actually one of his colleagues.
Bao Enbao explained: “In order to form a core team for the Hongxin and Quanxin projects, I need to travel between the mainland and Taiwan frequently. For security reasons, I have to ask my colleague ‘Cao Shan’ to hold the technology shares of the R&D team.” Bao Enbao emphasized, “Because the core team has too many Taiwanese nationalities, and it is inconvenient to carry out industrial and commercial registration during the non-compete agreement period, it can only be agreed through the labor contract. After the company operates normally and generates profits, the Taiwanese who have the non-compete agreement expires will be given to Taiwan. The backbone of the nationality to distribute equity.”
Among the more than 400 employees of Jinan Quanxin, 180 of them are Taiwanese engineers, and their average monthly salary is between 50,000 and 100,000 yuan.
Bao Enbao said that due to the different route from Hongxin’s executives, he left Hongxin in November 2018 and brought some core personnel to Jinan to participate in the establishment of Quanxin. As for the suspension of salary payments, it is emphasized that the capital chain is not broken, and there are still 600 to 700 million yuan deposits in the account.
However, according to industrial and commercial data, although the registered capital of Jinan Quanxin is as high as 5.95 billion yuan, the paid-in capital was only 510 million yuan at the beginning, and then it began to be supplemented to 3.237 billion yuan. According to previous reports, this part of the funds are mainly funded by two subsidiaries of Jinan State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, and Jinan Jixin Industry Development Company, which joined later, while Yixin Integration, controlled by Bao Enbao, who goes by the pseudonym “Cao Shan”, seems to be Not a single point. This is exactly the same as that of Wuhan Hongxin at that time.
In addition, before the “unfinished end” of Jinan Quanxin was revealed this time, there were many voices in the industry who were not optimistic about this project, thinking that it would repeat the mistakes of Hongxin. And Bao Enbao, who manages Quanxin, seems to have already anticipated this ending. Therefore, Quanxin went against the industry’s conventions and built a photomask factory before the fab was built (the so-called photomask, also called photomask). The version, the English name is Mask, is a master made of quartz and can be used in the semiconductor exposure process). And in October last year, the photomask factory built by Quanxin became a new company independently – Quanyi Photomask Optoelectronics Technology (Jinan) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Quanyi Photomask”).
According to the data, Quanyi Mask was established in October 2020 with a registered capital of 500 million yuan. It is reported that Quanyi mask has a complete production line and a professional team, and has already started production. In February of this year, Quanyi Mask also held a public tender for its “IT integration project” with a tender amount of 10 million yuan.
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