Asian Tech Press (Feb 10) -- Unidentified contamination has been affecting production at two joint plants of U.S. computer company Western Digital Corp and Japan's Kioxia Holdings Corp in the Asian island country.

The two companies issued statements on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, saying that contamination of materials used in their flash memory manufacturing processes has affected production at their Yokkaichi and Kitakami joint plants in Japan.

This is another setback for chip production as the global semiconductor shortage continues. The two companies said they are working to bring the two affected factories back to normal operations as soon as possible.

Flash memory is an important part of many electronic devices, replacing disk as the primary storage for data, and is used in a variety of products, from Apple's iPhone to supercomputers.

South Korea's Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix and US-based Micron Technology are other major producers of such semiconductors.

Statements from Western Digital and Kioxia did not give an estimate of when production would resume. Typically, it takes three months for a chip to go from a piece of silicon to a finished component that can be used in electronic devices.

According to Western Digital's current assessment, the issue would reduce its flash availability of at least 6.5 exabytes.

Kioxia said it partially affected production of its three-dimensional (3D) flash memory BiCS FLASH at both plants, and expected "shipment of its conventional 2D NAND flash memory will be affected."

Last August, it's said that Western Digital was in talks for $20 billion merger with Kioxia, but the acquisition is currently at a standstill.