Asian Tech Press (SEP 09) -- According to media reports, Malaysian semiconductor manufacturer Unisem Bhd's plants in Ipoh, the capital of the state of Perak, Malaysia, had been asked by the health department to close for a week from September 8 to September 15 due to the recent death of three of its employees who were infected with Covid-19.

The company will then limit the number of staff allowed into the facilities when they reopen. Unisem, which provides packaging and testing services, gets about 12 percent of its revenue from the auto sector, 28 percent from communications and 30 percent from consumer segments. Unisem stated that this one-week shutdown will result in a 2% reduction in annual production.

Unisem has been trying to procure vaccines for its Ipoh plants since this June but failed. The company conducted a mass on-site vaccination from September 1-3 through a private agreement. Most of their employees, customer resident engineers, and contractor employees who provide transportation, security, and cleaning services for the plants received their first vaccine doses.

Despite the disruption to their production due to the one-week shutdown, Unisem said the safety of employees and the local population is the company's top priority and will adhere to high prevention standards to minimize transmission.

Unisem is one of several large Malaysian-based chip assemblers and testers for Infineon Technologies and STMicroelectronics. It provides packaging services for chips used in cars produced by Toyota, Tesla and many other car manufacturers. This one-week production stoppage will likely affect the supply of automotive chips as well, especially in the case of a tight global supply of automotive chips.