An explosion and fire at a Panasonic Industrial Devices Materials facility in Hsinchu, Taiwan, killed two workers and injured five on Wednesday.
The fire broke out at 2 am local time in a five-story building where printed circuit boards (PCBs, the boards that connect chips and components in nearly every electronic device) are made. More than 20 staff were on the production lines. The five injured men were conscious and taken to hospital soon after. Two other employees were missing. Early reports counted only the injured, but a later update confirmed the missing pair had been found dead.
Firefighters sent 12 vehicles and 23 personnel, who used heavy machinery to dig through debris before finding the two workers. According to local media, the site does R&D and manufactures PCBs and semiconductor packaging materials. It passed a safety inspection in August. Panasonic said it is investigating the cause.
No cause has been established. A recent deadly explosion at Intel's Fab 28 in Israel, which also killed two people, was initially linked to flammable solvents such as methanol and methyl ethyl ketone. Nothing in the available reporting ties Wednesday's blast to chemicals, so the comparison is only a reminder that chip-related plants handle hazardous materials.
The supply chain question is harder to answer. PCBs have recently been in short supply because of demand from the AI industry, and a plant that also makes packaging materials sits close to the chip supply chain. But the source says it is unclear how important this factory is to the wider market, and no one has said how long it will be out of action. A single site matters little in a market with many suppliers. It matters a great deal when capacity is already tight. Which of those describes Hsinchu depends on output figures Panasonic has not yet published.