Taipei, April 20 (CNA) Nanya Technology Corp. will build a 12-inch wafer plant in northern Taiwan, at a cost of NT$300 billion (US$10.63 billion), to enhance the competitiveness and long-term development of the company, Nanya President Lee Pei-ing said Tuesday.

The investment is not aimed at boosting the company's market share, but at enhancing its competitive edge, narrowing its difference with rivals and securing long-term development, Lee said at a press conference at the company's headquarters in New Taipei.

Nanya Technology, one of the world's largest dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chipmakers, officially announced the new fab project at the press event.

DRAM can be used in a wide range of areas, including 5G, artificial intelligence, automatic vehicles and cloud computing. Thanks to increased global demand for smart electronic devices, demand for DRAM grew by 15-20 percent annually, Lee said.

Eyeing the global market, Nanya Technology has begun developing business in multiple fields, Lee said, noting that currently consumer products account for 60-70 percent of the company's total output, and server memory chips 5-10 percent.

The company hopes to maintain server memory chip output at 10 percent annually in the future, separate from the production of low-power memory chips and standard memory chips for notebook computers, Lee said.

"The introduction of new technologies will allow Nanya to create more new products, such as DDR5 memory," Lee said.

DDR5 is designed to increase the bandwidth delivered to systems.

Announcing the investment to build a 12-inch wafer plant to produce DRAMs for the company's own use, Nanya Technology Chairman Wu Chia-chau said the advanced wafer plant is scheduled to break ground as early as the end of the year in Taishan District, New Taipei.

Wu said construction of the first basic production line is expected to be completed in 2023, with trial production starting at 15,000 wafers a month.

The plan will be carried out in three phases over the next seven years, with ultimate production capacity of 45,000 wafers a month, he said, adding that the new fab will hire 2,000 employees and is expected to create thousands of additional jobs in Taiwan's DRAM supply chain.

The planned fab will adopt Nanya's self-developed second-generation 10-nano process technology and have an extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) production line, Wu said.

Nanya Technology currently runs a 12-inch wafer plant in Nanlin Science Park, New Taipei, which has a monthly output of 60,000 to 70,000 wafers.

Once the new fab enters full production, the number of chips the company can produce from one wafer could double from the current level, Wu said.

On Tuesday, the stock price of Nanya Technology, part of the Formosa Plastic Group, rose by 0.3 percent to end the day at NT$99.7 on Taiwan's Stock Exchange.