Weekly Supply Chain in Asia 2026-W40 (2026-09-24~2026-10-02)

From this issue, the newsletter publishes on Saturdays. This issue covers September 24 to October 2.

South Korea’s September exports reached a record USD 120.9 billion, with semiconductors above USD 60 billion for the first time, and consensus estimates put Samsung Electronics and SK hynix on course for a combined third-quarter operating profit of about KRW 190 trillion, and TrendForce raised its 2027 HBM price outlook. Ultium Cells, LG Energy Solution’s joint venture with General Motors, said its Tennessee plant will produce lithium-manganese-rich prismatic cells. The EU extended its safeguard on grain-oriented electrical steel to transformer cores, including cores already inside finished transformers.

Memory & HBM

South Korean chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are projected to post a combined third-quarter operating profit of about KRW 190 trillion, a quarterly record for both, according to consensus estimates from local financial-data provider Wise Report cited by Business Korea on September 28. Samsung’s estimate is KRW 111.38 trillion in operating profit, up 815.47% year on year, on revenue of KRW 204.76 trillion; it would be the first time a South Korean company has posted quarterly operating profit above KRW 100 trillion. SK hynix’s estimate is KRW 78.13 trillion on revenue of KRW 99.54 trillion. Brokerage KB Securities expects HBM to take 40% of Samsung’s DRAM production capacity by 2027, up from 27% last year, with general-purpose DRAM falling from 73% to 59%; lead times for DDR5 server DRAM have reportedly stretched to as long as 52 weeks.

South Korea’s exports rose 83.5% year on year in September to a record USD 120.94 billion, the first month above USD 120 billion, according to the trade ministry’s monthly figures released on October 1, Maeil Business reported. Semiconductor exports rose 262.8% to USD 60.3 billion, above USD 60 billion for the first time, on growing memory demand. The monthly trade surplus was USD 49.85 billion, and exports for January to September, at USD 814.5 billion, have already passed last year’s record annual total of USD 709.3 billion.

Taiwanese market researcher TrendForce raised its 2027 HBM price outlook on September 29 and now expects the blended average selling price to rise 121% year on year, citing persistent supply constraints, a growing share of higher-priced HBM4 and the ramp of HBM4e in the second half of 2027. It said GPU and ASIC makers are considering 8-Hi HBM stacks instead of 12-Hi to stretch limited supply, but expects 8-Hi to carry a 10–20% per-gigabit price premium over 12-Hi in 2027, because each stack still needs one base die.

ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), China’s largest domestic DRAM maker, is building a production line for NAND flash research and development at a new fab in Beijing, EE Times Japan reported on September 25, citing Reuters. China’s leading NAND maker, Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC), sampled low-power DRAM to customers and will decide whether to produce DRAM after customer feedback due by the end of 2026, Reuters reported in April. In June, both companies were reported to be heading toward initial public offerings.

Batteries & ESS

Ultium Cells, the US battery-cell joint venture of South Korean battery maker LG Energy Solution and US carmaker General Motors, will convert its plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, to make lithium-manganese-rich (LMR) prismatic cells for future GM electric vehicles, TheGuru reported on September 30. Work starts this year and finishes in 2028, with USD 1 billion going into LFP and LMR production programs and plant upgrades through 2030, and 500 more workers to be hired; Ultium Cells expects the plant to be the world’s first volume producer of LMR prismatic cells but has not given a start date for LMR output. LG Energy Solution and GM announced joint LMR development in May 2025 with a target of US commercial production in 2028. GM plans to use LMR in future electric pickups and large SUVs while keeping high-nickel cells for its longest-range models. Since June, the plant has also been making LFP cells for customers of Vertech, LG Energy Solution’s US energy-storage system-integration subsidiary.

China’s operating and planned sodium-ion battery capacity has passed 400 GWh, against 11 GWh in the rest of the world, the Financial Times reported, according to TheGuru on September 24. Battery raw-materials researcher CRU said the West has effectively missed the chance to lead the market early. Sodium-ion cells have lower energy density than lithium-ion cells but suit small electric vehicles, energy storage and data-center backup power. CATL, the Chinese battery maker that leads global EV cell shipments, agreed with Dutch energy-storage and grid-equipment company Alfen in July to supply 5 GWh of sodium-ion energy storage to Europe from 2027.

Power Grid & Equipment

The EU began provisional safeguard measures on September 25 on grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES), the core material that sets a transformer’s energy loss, and extended them to the laminated plates and cores processed from it, including cores already inside finished transformers, Business Korea reported. The measures run for 155 days. South Korean GOES has a country quota of 4,789.93 tonnes; cores embedded in finished transformers fall outside the quota and carry a provisional duty of EUR 1,140 per tonne. Because the EU has not specified whether the duty applies to the GOES content or to the full weight of the core, Korean makers cannot yet calculate the cost. Korean transformer maker HD Hyundai Electric is reviewing the burden but is not changing existing contracts, and South Korean steelmaker POSCO, a GOES supplier, plans to consult the government and customers. A final ruling is expected around February 2027.

Mitsubishi Electric Power Products, the US subsidiary of Japanese electrical-equipment maker Mitsubishi Electric, released a “Chip-to-Grid DSX” reference design on September 22 for AI data centers built on platforms from US AI-chip designer NVIDIA such as Vera Rubin NVL72. It covers the site from the grid connection, on-site generation and battery storage through medium-voltage distribution, 800V DC power and liquid cooling; on-site generation and storage let the site run as a microgrid during grid faults. Its basic building block carries about 250 MW of IT load across 1,344 GPU racks and can scale to 1 GW. Mitsubishi Electric said it will offer data-center operators solutions based on the design.

Samsung C&T, Samsung Group’s construction-and-trading arm, is investing in US small-modular-reactor developer Kairos Power and will take part in the design and construction of Kairos Power’s Hermes 2 project, which is to supply power to data centers run by US internet company Google, TheGuru reported on September 26. Samsung C&T aims to use the experience to join Kairos Power’s later SMR projects.

South Korea’s trade ministry named on October 1, for the first time outside reports to the National Assembly, the three projects the Korean and US governments will pursue under their strategic-investment memorandum, Maeil Business reported. The first, Project Star, is a 6,472 MW gas combined-cycle plant at Encinal, Texas, that will supply power directly to a nearby AI data center, with first-phase commercial operation in 2029 and full operation in 2032, at a total cost of USD 22.3 billion. Its developers include New York real-estate developer Related Companies and US power company NextEra Energy, and Lewis Energy Group, a South Texas natural-gas producer, provides the land, gas and water. No power purchase agreement has been signed yet; trade minister Kim Jeong-gwan said the US has guaranteed one will be arranged at an appropriate time and put the expected return at 13.9%. Project Power commits USD 120 billion of the USD 200 billion fund to eight large reactors in the US — two Korean-designed APR1400s and six AP1000s from US reactor designer Westinghouse, built in three phases — under a framework to be signed by both governments, Westinghouse, Korea Electric Power Corporation and its nuclear subsidiary Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power. The ministry said this effectively revises the January 2025 settlement between Westinghouse and the two Korean companies that had kept the APR1400 out of the US. Of the USD 120 billion, USD 20 billion is a reserve for cost overruns, and Korea will pay USD 10 billion in advance for long-lead equipment; specific conditions for each reactor are still to be negotiated. The third project, Alaska LNG, goes to review, and the minister said it is true that it falls short on commercial rationality.

Also This Week

• TrendForce said on September 24 that Japanese and Korean MLCC makers are moving capacity from consumer parts to AI uses; Murata Manufacturing, the Japanese company with the largest share of the global MLCC market, said on September 10 it will discontinue some general-purpose consumer and automotive MLCCs, taking orders until 2028 with final shipments in 2029. PC makers Dell, HP, ASUS and Acer have begun qualifying MLCCs from Chinese suppliers such as Viiyong and Chaozhou Three-Circle, according to TrendForce.
• TDK and Taiyo Yuden, two Japanese electronic-component makers, signed a basic agreement on September 29 to consider a business alliance centered on joint development of MLCCs and inductors, including manufacturing and procurement. TDK said nothing specific has been decided and that a capital tie-up is among the options.
• Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Samsung’s electronic-component arm, will invest KRW 6.78 trillion in FCBGA substrate capacity — KRW 4.27 trillion at its Sejong plant and KRW 2.51 trillion at its Vietnamese subsidiary — from September through May 2028, with full-scale mass production from September 2028; according to industry sources cited by Business Korea, customer advance payments will fund a substantial portion.
• Fujifilm, the Japanese company founded as a photographic-film maker that now also supplies photoresists and other chip materials, will build its first semiconductor-materials plant in India, investing about INR 8 billion (about JPY 13 billion) in stages at Dholera, Gujarat, near the front-end fab that the Tata Group’s Tata Electronics is building there, under an MOU announced on September 17.
• VisionPower Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (VSMC), the joint venture of Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors and Taiwanese specialty foundry Vanguard International Semiconductor, opened its 300mm fab in Tampines, Singapore, on September 28. Mass production starts in the first quarter of 2027, and capacity at full operation in 2029 is now put at about 44,000 wafers a month, down from the 55,000 cited at groundbreaking; Taiwanese foundry TSMC licenses the process technology.
• Japanese motor maker Nidec released its delayed results for the year to March 2026 on September 30: revenue rose 3.9% to JPY 2.71 trillion, but it posted an operating loss of JPY 519.0 billion and a net loss of JPY 564.6 billion after JPY 632.1 billion of impairments. Its auditor, PwC Japan, issued a disclaimer of opinion, saying it could not obtain sufficient evidence that corrections for the improper accounting found by a third-party committee were complete. President Mitsuya Kishida resigned on September 29, a day after Nidec responded to a report that its board had resolved to dismiss him. On October 1 Nidec agreed to sell Nidec Components, formerly Copal Electronics, a maker of sensors, switches and encoders, to a fund of US private-equity firm The Carlyle Group for JPY 102.98 billion, with the transfer set for December 1.
• Japan Display (JDI), formed in 2012 from the small and mid-size LCD businesses of Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi, agreed on September 30 to sell its Mobara plant in Chiba, its main LCD plant until production ended in November 2025, to Shinko Electric Industries, a Nagano-based maker of flip-chip package substrates. Shinko will make it a new core plant for the flip-chip packages used in AI accelerators, with handover on March 31, 2027 and operations from fiscal 2028, and will pass the plant’s western area to its partner FICT, a Nagano maker of circuit boards and package substrates. The price was not disclosed; JDI expects a gain of JPY 51.4 billion.
• LS Eco Energy, a subsidiary of South Korean cable maker LS Cable & System, will invest KRW 11.6 billion in a samarium-metal facility at its Vietnamese subsidiary in Ho Chi Minh City, with about 240 tonnes a year of capacity — enough for 700 to 1,000 tonnes of the samarium-cobalt magnets used in fighter jets and missiles — and trial production from December. Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths will supply the raw material, and the metal will go to LS Cable & System’s magnet plant. From January 2027, US Department of Defense sourcing rules for these magnets extend to the raw-material stage.
• China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology told major tech companies to report purchase plans for NVIDIA’s RTX Pro 5500, a workstation chip not on the US export-control list, and indicated to some that it intends to approve them, The Information reported, according to Business Korea on September 28. TikTok owner ByteDance is said to be considering about 1 million units, and NVIDIA has told customers to complete orders by November 30.

Company in Focus

Mitsubishi Electric — a Japanese heavy-electrical maker spun out of Mitsubishi’s Kobe shipyard in 1921 to build marine motors. Its products now run from elevators and factory robots to grid hardware, and for data centers it sells UPS units, battery storage, high- and medium-voltage breakers, transformers and coolant-distribution units. Beyond the shared keiretsu name, it has no link to Mitsubishi Motors.