Array

TOKYO, May 31 (Reuters) Toshiba Corp., the world's fourth-largest semiconductor maker, said on Wednesday it would spend over 50 billion yen ($450 million) in the next five years to build a new factory in Japan to make power microchips.

Demand is growing for power chips, which control the flow Of electricity in consumer electronics, personal computers, game consoles and hybrid cars.

Construction of the plant, which will be located in central Japan's Ishikawa prefecture and will process 200-mm silicon wafers, is scheduled to begin in September, with commercial production slated for the third quarter of calendar 2007.

The new plant will reach its full processing capacity of 60,000 wafers a month in the second half of the 2010/11 business year ending March 2011.

Prior to the announcement, shares in Toshiba, which is also the world's second-largest maker of NAND-type flash memory chips behind Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., closed unchanged at 750 yen, outperforming the Tokyo stock market's electrical machinery index, which fell 2.75 percent.

($1=112.10 Yen) REUTERS CS DS1535