TSMC’s ambitious AI chip packaging plant in Chiayi, Taiwan, has faced two major setbacks in 2025-but the company is pushing forward. After a tragic workplace accident in May claimed a worker’s life due to a falling switchboard, the site was hit again, this time by nature.
Typhoon Danas, the first typhoon to strike Chiayi in 120 years, battered Taiwan’s western region last week, disrupting construction efforts.
The storm, which has already left two dead and over 500 injured across western Taiwan, caused scaffolding to collapse at the Chiayi facility. Fortunately, damage to the plant itself was limited. Local officials confirmed the collapse but said no further injuries occurred during the storm. Despite this, it marks the second serious delay this year for the under-construction CoWoS (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate) facility.
The Chiayi site is crucial to TSMC’s plans to meet surging demand for advanced AI chip packaging. As AI models grow in complexity and power, companies like NVIDIA require high-performance multi-die packaging to support them. TSMC’s solution? Scaling up chip packaging capacity, and Chiayi is a big part of that expansion.
TSMC CEO C.C. Wei, known for his hands-on leadership, has taken responsibility for workplace safety incidents. After the May accident, he personally pledged improvements and emphasized that the company’s mission goes beyond profit. “We understand our social responsibility,” he said at the time. Construction resumed on June 3 after a government safety review cleared the site.
Now, after Typhoon Danas’s disruption, the plant’s contractors are accelerating work to recover the lost time. While this double blow may test TSMC’s resilience, the company remains focused on delivering its Chiayi packaging line on schedule-vital to keeping up with the global AI hardware race.
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