Samsung Breaks Ground on HBM Packaging Plant, Fast-Tracked to 2028

Samsung Electronics broke ground Thursday on a semiconductor packaging facility at its Onyang campus in Asan, South Chungcheong Province, with production set to start in June 2028 — a full year ahead of the original schedule. The plant anchors a 144 trillion-won ($108.4 billion) investment plan by Samsung and three affiliates to expand advanced manufacturing capacity across the region.

The groundbreaking ceremony drew President Lee Jae Myung, Samsung Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong, Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hyeong-il, South Chungcheong Province Governor Park Soo-hyun, and roughly 100 executives and employees from Samsung and its partner companies.

The stakes are straightforward. The new line converts Onyang from a site focused on conventional semiconductor assembly and testing into a production hub for high bandwidth memory (HBM) — the stacked DRAM modules that sit beside AI accelerators and are the binding supply constraint in the AI hardware market. Samsung said during its third-quarter earnings announcement last month that it had completed negotiations over HBM supply volumes for 2027, yet customers were still requesting additional supplies. The company expects supply shortages to persist through 2028.

What did Lee Jae-yong promise at the ceremony?

Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong framed the project as a transformation of the campus's mission, and his remarks carried the strongest language of the event.

"Through today's groundbreaking ceremony, we pledge to take another leap forward," Lee Jae-yong said. "This site, which has traditionally focused on simply assembling and testing conventional semiconductors, will become a leading hub for advanced HBM, the heart of AI [artificial intelligence] semiconductors."

The phrase matters for a company that has trailed SK hynix in the HBM race. Onyang gives Samsung a dedicated packaging site for the segment, rather than capacity bolted onto memory fabs.

How much is Samsung spending, and on what?

Samsung Electronics is investing 46 trillion won in Onyang for the new HBM production lines. The split is 6 trillion won for construction and 40 trillion won for advanced equipment, to be installed in stages.

The Onyang spending sits inside a larger 60 trillion-won commitment by Samsung Electronics across the Chungcheong provinces, which also covers expanded semiconductor production capacity at Onyang and in nearby Cheonan.

The facility itself is substantial in scale:

• The new fifth line will add about 31,000 square meters of cleanroom space across three floors.
• Once completed, it will raise the campus's total floor area to approximately 420,000 square meters, up from 270,000 square meters — a 55 percent increase.
• Operations at the facility are expected to create around 700 jobs.
• Construction is projected to generate 2.6 trillion won in economic output, with an average of 3,400 workers employed daily during the build.

Why did the timeline move up by a year?

The schedule accelerated through a combination of corporate urgency and government action. The ceremony took place about four months after Samsung Group announced its investment plan for the Chungcheong region in July. South Chungcheong Province and Asan City compressed the start of construction by cutting the time required for regulatory approvals and permits to one-third of the usual period.

President Lee Jae Myung pledged continued state support to speed the projects along, including streamlined permitting and infrastructure development.

"To ensure that all investment plans in the Chungcheong, Honam and Yeongnam regions proceed without a hitch, the central and local governments will work as one team to ensure that all necessary permits are handled and key infrastructure, including power and water supplies, is put in place," the president said.

Honam refers to the Jeolla provinces in the western part of Korea. Yeongnam refers to the Gyeongsang provinces in the east.

What are the other Samsung affiliates building?

The Onyang plant is one piece of a coordinated regional buildout by four Samsung Group companies, with combined spending of 144 trillion won.

Samsung Display plans to invest 67 trillion won in Asan and Cheonan. That includes 5.9 trillion won for a new OLED production line serving foldable devices, laptops and tablets. Construction on that facility began last month, with mass production targeted for the second half of 2029.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics will invest 8 trillion won in the region. Of that, 4.27 trillion won goes to its Sejong facility to expand production of flip-chip ball grid array substrates (the packaging boards that connect AI server chips and other high-performance computing silicon to circuit boards). A new plant at the site is scheduled to begin mass production in September 2028.

Samsung SDI plans to invest 9 trillion won in Cheonan to build facilities for developing next-generation battery technologies and validating new production processes — the piece of the plan aimed at the EV battery market rather than AI hardware.

Why does the packaging facility matter for AI supply?

Packaging, not wafer fabrication, has become the chokepoint for HBM output. Advanced HBM packaging stacks multiple DRAM dies and bonds them with through-silicon vias, a process with long lead times and limited global capacity. Samsung's decision to dedicate a 31,000-square-meter cleanroom to the step signals that the company views packaging capacity, as much as memory design, as the route to claiming HBM share.

The demand signal behind the move is explicit. Samsung said it has already locked in HBM supply volumes for 2027 and still faces requests for more, and it expects shortages to run through 2028 — a window the June 2028 start of Onyang operations is timed to catch.

The fast-tracked permit process, backed by presidential-level commitment on power and water infrastructure, also indicates that Korea intends to treat semiconductor capacity expansion as a coordinated national project rather than a series of private site decisions. With Samsung Display, Samsung Electro-Mechanics and Samsung SDI building in parallel across Asan, Cheonan and Sejong, the Chungcheong region is positioned to become Samsung's largest concentration of new advanced manufacturing capacity by the end of the decade.