Weekly Supply Chain in Asia 2026-W41 (2026-10-03~2026-10-09)

Samsung Electronics posted a record KRW 107.4 trillion third-quarter operating profit, and Solidigm, SK hynix’s NAND unit, picked lead underwriters for a possible US listing. LG Energy Solution signed for Canadian lithium and is building sodium-ion lines in China and Korea, while LS Electric won a North American data-center transformer order and signed to form a joint venture in Taiwan. Samsung Heavy Industries reached 20 LNG carrier orders for the year, and HD Hyundai Heavy Industries teamed up with a Croatian yard for a corvette program.

Memory & HBM

Samsung Electronics, the world’s biggest memory chipmaker, reported preliminary third-quarter operating profit of KRW 107.4 trillion on revenue of KRW 195 trillion on October 8, up 782.5% and 126.59% year on year — the largest quarterly operating profit by a Korean company, Business Korea reported. Its operating margin of about 55.1% was also a record. The consensus estimate that Business Korea cited on September 28 had been KRW 111.38 trillion. Securities analysts estimate the chip division earned about KRW 110 trillion, on demand for HBM, server DDR5 and enterprise SSDs; the preliminary release does not break out divisions, which come with the final results later this month. Samsung has said it expects the memory shortage to last through 2028, because a new fab takes more than three and a half years to reach production. Its finished-products division lost KRW 800 billion in the second quarter as rising memory prices pushed up component costs.

Solidigm, SK hynix’s US NAND flash and SSD unit formed in 2021 from the business it bought from Intel, has picked Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as lead underwriters for a possible US initial public offering, with JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and UBS also in the syndicate, Bloomberg and other foreign media reported on October 8, according to Business Korea. Market observers estimate it could raise up to USD 10 billion at a valuation of up to USD 100 billion, with a listing as early as 2027; it is reportedly in the final stage of a pre-IPO stake sale. SK hynix said it is reviewing funding options for Solidigm but has made no specific decision.

Elon Musk, CEO of US electric-car maker Tesla, said on X on October 1 that Tesla has halved the RAM on its AI5 chip to 72GB of LPDDR5 and fixed AI6 at 144GB of LPDDR6, about a third less, calling it the only way to secure enough memory for volume production of its Optimus humanoid robot amid what TheGuru described as a continuing global memory shortage. Musk said bandwidth, not capacity, limits the robot’s performance and that bandwidth is unchanged; Tesla plans to rely more on on-chip SRAM. Samsung Electronics and Taiwanese foundry TSMC are to make AI5 on 2nm processes at Taylor, Texas, and in Arizona; Samsung reached AI5 tape-out in July and signed a USD 16.5 billion contract with Tesla in July 2025 that also covers AI6.

Batteries & ESS

LG Energy Solution, the biggest of South Korea’s three battery makers, has completed a proof of concept with customers for sodium-ion batteries aimed at long-duration energy storage and aims to ship samples to US energy-storage customers next year, Business Korea reported on October 3, citing industry sources. It has reportedly converted an existing line at its Nanjing Plant 1 in China into a pilot line with 200MWh of annual capacity and is building a mother line at its Ochang plant in South Korea. CATL, the Chinese battery maker that leads global EV cell shipments, signed in April to supply 60GWh of sodium-ion batteries over three years to Chinese energy-storage company Hyperstrong, which CATL called the largest sodium-ion supply contract to date, and plans global supply of its TENER Sodium storage product from June next year.

LG Energy Solution also signed a long-term agreement on October 8 to buy 240,000 tons of lithium concentrate over four years, starting at the end of this year, from North American lithium producer Elevra Lithium, from the North American Lithium mine it operates in Quebec, Business Korea reported. The company put the volume at about 30,000 tons of lithium hydroxide, enough for about 700,000 high-performance electric vehicles. It aims to expand its LFP capacity for energy storage in North America to more than 50GWh by the end of this year.

EVE Power, a Chinese battery-cell maker, signed a multi-year master supply agreement to provide cells for the energy-storage systems of US company Fluence Energy, according to EVE Power and US investment platform ZACKS on October 5, TheGuru reported. In the same report, TheGuru noted that Tesla is pursuing a USD 4.3 billion (about KRW 5.8 trillion) purchase of LFP cells from LG Energy Solution for its Megapack 3 storage system, to be made from next year at the Lansing, Michigan plant that was originally a joint-venture site with General Motors before GM withdrew.

Power Grid & Equipment

LS Electric, a South Korean power-equipment maker, disclosed on October 1 a USD 133.41 million (about KRW 181.2 billion) contract to supply 345kV transformers for a hyperscale AI data-center project in North America, with deliveries to nine substations through 2030. On October 6 in Seoul, it signed an agreement to form a joint venture in Taiwan with Nan Ya Plastics, a core Formosa Plastics Group affiliate that LS Electric describes as Taiwan’s largest petrochemical company, and KHI, a company Formosa set up last year to commercialize technology developed at KAIST. LS Electric holds 50%, Nan Ya 40% and KHI 10%. The venture, Namanakseong, is to win, design and handle power projects in Taiwan, moving the partners beyond the equipment supply they have done under a March 2025 memorandum. Taiwan’s government aims to raise renewables to as much as 70% of its power by 2050.

Doosan Enerbility, a South Korean maker of gas turbines and power-plant equipment, held a shipment ceremony at its Changwon headquarters on October 6 for a 380MW-class gas turbine (DGT6-300H) bound for SpaceXAI, a US artificial-intelligence company, Business Korea reported. Executives of the two companies discussed expanding the gas turbine business after the ceremony.

HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world’s largest shipbuilder, said on October 2 that it has signed the main contract to design, procure, fabricate, install and commission the offshore substation for the Taean offshore wind project, following a pre-design contract in March and a preferred-supplier agreement in July. The substation will raise the voltage of power from a 500MW wind farm off Taean County for transmission to shore. The developer, Taean Wind Power, is a joint venture of Singaporean renewable-energy company Vena Energy, Danish investor Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and South Korean state power generator Korea Western Power. DNV verified HD Hyundai Heavy Industries’ 500MW substation design at the basic-design stage in 2025 and the detailed-design stage in August.

Synthos Green Energy (SGE), a Polish small-modular-reactor developer that has Samsung C&T as its engineering, procurement and construction partner, said on October 6 local time that a group of Polish entrepreneurs had committed PLN 500 million (about KRW 170 billion) in equity, and that it has secured PLN 1.35 billion (about KRW 460 billion) in capital commitments from overseas investors, TheGuru reported. SGE builds on the BWRX-300 reactor from GE Vernova Hitachi, a joint venture of GE Vernova and Hitachi; it has decisions in principle for 26 units in Poland, with three sites under development for the first 14, and plans 14 units totaling 4.2GW at three sites in the UK. On September 22, the construction division of Samsung C&T, Samsung Group’s construction-and-trading arm, signed a memorandum with SGE, GE Vernova and Hitachi to deploy standardized reactors in fleets across Central and Eastern Europe and the UK.

Defense & Shipbuilding

Samsung Heavy Industries, one of South Korea’s three large shipbuilders, disclosed on October 2 an order for two LNG carriers from an Asian shipowner worth KRW 672.2 billion, for delivery by May 2029, bringing its LNG carrier orders this year to 20, including one LNG floating storage and regasification unit, Business Korea reported. Commercial-vessel orders have reached USD 8 billion, 140% of the USD 5.7 billion annual target. With USD 4.4 billion of offshore orders, including two floating LNG units, its total for the year stands at 48 vessels worth USD 12.4 billion, 89% of its USD 13.9 billion full-year target.

US autonomous-vessel company Saronic Technologies broke ground on Port Alpha, an autonomous shipyard in Brownsville, Texas, backed by more than USD 3 billion of private capital, with US Vice President J.D. Vance at the ceremony, local outlet Texas Insider reported on October 2, according to TheGuru. Samsung Heavy Industries, which signed a strategic partnership with Saronic in July, will apply its robotics-based production automation and its process standardization and modularization to the yard’s design and operation. Port Alpha is to start with capacity of 150,000 gross tons a year — more than double current US commercial shipbuilding capacity, according to the report — building ships up to 259 meters long at first and more than 366 meters after expansion. TheGuru described Samsung Heavy Industries’ approach as asset-light: exporting design, operating and automation know-how instead of buying stakes in US yards.

HD Hyundai Heavy Industries signed a teaming agreement with Croatia’s Iskra Shipyard, an affiliate of Slovenian electronics and automation group Iskra, to pursue jointly the Croatian Navy’s program to acquire two multipurpose corvettes, SeeNews reported on October 6, according to TheGuru. HD Hyundai Heavy Industries would handle design and systems integration and Iskra would build the hulls in Croatia; the program requires local construction and technology transfer. Iskra Group took over Rijeka’s 3. Maj shipyard, founded in 1905. HD Hyundai Heavy Industries is offering the same platform as BRP Miguel Malvar, which it delivered to the Philippine Navy in 2024 — 118.4 meters long and 3,200 tons. TheGuru put the program at up to KRW 2.4 trillion and in January named Germany’s TKMS and France’s Naval Group as other candidates.

HD Hyundai, the group that owns HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, said on October 6 that it has delivered a 13,000 TEU container ship for a French shipping company that partly applies a hybrid version of its “Lashing Free” technology, which removes the manual lashing of containers on deck, and called it a world first. HD Hyundai Heavy Industries developed the technology, which extends the cell guides that keep containers aligned in the hold up above the deck, with standardized portable benches the size of a 40-foot container installed between them, and HD Hyundai Samho, a group shipyard, did the detailed design and construction. The group said the design lets the ship carry more than 10% more cargo weight on deck, and that sea trials in September showed much lower vibration than ships with hatch covers and lashing bridges.

US Navy Vice Admiral Robert M. Gaucher, who oversees the Navy’s submarine programs, and Rear Admiral Jonathan Rucker, who is responsible for submarine design and construction, recently visited Hanwha Philly Shipyard in Philadelphia to discuss advanced manufacturing, automation, workforce training and government–industry cooperation, the shipyard said on October 8, TheGuru reported. Hanwha Group, the South Korean conglomerate and one of the country’s big three shipbuilding groups, bought the yard in 2024 and announced a USD 5 billion investment plan for it last year. In July the yard was selected to build a missile tracking and instrumentation ship for the US Missile Defense Agency; TheGuru said the visit raises the question of whether its cooperation with the US Navy could extend to submarine construction and supply chains.

HD Hyundai Marine Solution, HD Hyundai’s ship-services company, disclosed on October 8 that it will buy all of Goltens, a marine and power-plant engine maintenance company founded in New York in 1940 and now headquartered in New Jersey, for USD 247 million (about KRW 331.5 billion), Business Korea reported. Goltens services two- and four-stroke engines from multiple makers, with 28 repair bases, 19 workshops and 31 subsidiaries worldwide and about 1,300 technicians serving some 2,300 customers and 5,500 vessels. Goltens keeps its CEO-led independent management, and HD Hyundai plans to use its local network and service capability to build a stable power supply chain and expand the business.

Also This Week

• Japan’s trade minister Ryosei Akazawa said on October 2 that his ministry will back the consolidation of Japan’s power-semiconductor businesses, as merger talks among Mitsubishi Electric, Toshiba and ROHM, announced in March 2026 with the aim of reaching some agreement by this summer, have run longer than expected.
• Denso, the largest supplier inside the Toyota group, and Niterra, formerly NGK Spark Plug, agreed to cancel the September 2025 deal under which Niterra was to buy Denso’s spark-plug and exhaust-sensor business for JPY 180.6 billion, Denso said on October 2. Denso asked to withdraw because demand for a range of powertrains is lasting longer than it had expected, and Niterra accepted rather than let negotiations drag on, MONOist reported.
• LG Electronics’ US subsidiary signed a long-term agreement to supply chillers and other cooling equipment to North American infrastructure company AIR Control Concept for data centers with 5GW of combined power capacity; industry sources put the value at KRW 2.5 trillion to KRW 5 trillion, Business Korea reported on October 6. LG Electronics plans a new chiller plant in Windsor, Virginia.
• Rapidus, Japan’s state-backed startup for leading-edge chipmaking, launched Rapidus CORE on October 5, a framework for a global ecosystem supporting the development and mass production of leading-edge chips, starting with 17 design partners, including Cadence Design Systems, Synopsys, Dai Nippon Printing, TOPPAN, Infosys and Wipro.

Company in Focus

LS Electric — a South Korean maker of electrical equipment, from low-voltage switchgear and circuit breakers to ultra-high-voltage transformers, plus factory-automation products such as PLCs and inverters. Founded in 1974 within the Lucky-Goldstar group and later called LG Industrial Systems, it left the LG Group with LS in 2003 and took its current name, from LS Industrial Systems, in 2020.