ST-Microelectronics broke ground on the site of its future chip packaging and test facility in Longgang, Guangdong Province, China.

Among senior local officials present at the groundbreaking were of Shenzhen City Mayor Xu Zong Heng and Senior Executive Vice Mayor Liu Ying Li.

The Longgang site is designed to house up to 40,000sqm of manufacturing space, with a capacity for approximately 5000 employees. The first 20,000sqm building is expected to be completed by the end of September 2008, with manufacturing equipment to be installed in Q4 2008.

In its first year of operation, the Longgang packaging and test plant is expected to produce more than 800 million units. The output can scale to more than 10 billion units per year at full ramp-up, which would represent around 20 percent of ST's current total back-end production. The Longgang plant will primarily assemble and test ST's power conversion devices for use by ST's customers worldwide.