Taiwan remained the largest buyer of semiconductor production materials for the 15th consecutive year, procuring US$20.1 billion of materials last year, industry association SEMI said.

Global semiconductor material spending grew by 3.8 percent from a year earlier to US$67.5 billion last year, SEMI said in a report yesterday.

Following Taiwan in materials procurement was China, which spent US$13.5 billion on semiconductor production materials, and South Korea with US$10.5 billion in purchases, the report said.

Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters

SEMI attributed the global growth in material purchases last year to the recovery of the overall semiconductor market, as well as increasing demand for advanced materials for the high-performance computing and high-bandwidth memory sectors.

Worldwide, spending on wafer fabrication materials last year rose 3.3 percent from a year earlier to US$42.9 billion, while spending on packaging materials increased 4.7 percent to US$24.6 billion, the report said.

The growth was due to a strong double-digit percentage increase in the procurement of materials used in advanced DRAM, 3D NAND flash and leading-edge logic ICs, it said.

However, demand for silicon remained weak last year, as the industry continued to work through excess inventory, resulting in a 7.1 percent decline in silicon consumption, SEMI said.