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Coco Feng

The China unit of Dutch chipmaker Nexperia has announced plans to shift its entire product line to a domestic 12-inch silicon wafer foundry, pursuing what it calls “independent operations” amid a nearly one-year-long dispute with its European headquarters.
Speaking at a press conference themed “based in China, serve the world” on Sunday, Nexperia’s China team – which used to source wafers from the firm’s European fabrication plants – said it was moving towards “100 per cent domestic production”, according to reports by local media outlets.
The unit’s supply-chain bottlenecks stem from a dispute between Nexperia’s Dutch headquarters and its Chinese parent company, Wingtech Technology, which owns the semiconductor firm. Caught between the conflicting parties, Nexperia’s Chinese operations have been cut off from crucial European wafer supplies.
A central update from the Sunday briefing was a shift to a new 12-inch wafer supply provided by an unnamed “Chinese strategic partner”. Nexperia China is now transferring all its products from its previous 8-inch and 6-inch production lines.
In semiconductor manufacturing, chips are cut from thin discs of silicon called wafers. Larger wafers typically produce more individual chips, lowering costs. Nexperia China said its new supply could achieve “unparalleled cost efficiency”, noting that a 12-inch wafer provided about four times the surface area of a 6-inch wafer and 2.25 times that of an 8-inch one.
Following a March milestone in which the unit announced it had achieved “small-volume production” of bipolar discrete devices, the firm said on Sunday that its broader product portfolio – including diodes, metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors and logic integrated circuits – would be made entirely from 12-inch wafers.
Previously, Nexperia operated under an integrated global supply chain, with raw wafers produced in German and British fabrication plants shipped for assembly to China – which is responsible for about 70 per cent of the firm’s global output – as well as Malaysia and the Philippines.


The company’s European facilities lacked 12-inch wafer manufacturing capabilities. Nexperia’s website showed that an 8-inch wafer line in Manchester, United Kingdom, went into operation in 2021, while Wingtech, the Chinese parent, previously committed 12 billion yuan (US$1.8 billion) to build a 12-inch one in Shanghai.
The relationship between Nexperia and Wingtech soured in September 2025 after the Dutch government intervened to restrict the Chinese parent company’s operational control over the chipmaker. The following month, Nexperia suspended wafer shipments to its assembly plant in Dongguan, a city in China’s southern Guangdong province.
Nexperia China has since operated with limited supplies. On Sunday, it said it had shipped more than 40 billion chips to more than 1,000 customers worldwide over the past 11 months.
Addressing the restructuring, John Chang, Nexperia China’s chief operating officer, was quoted by China Daily on Monday as saying the unit’s latest moves were “not about confronting anyone – they are about protecting those we serve”.
When contacted for comment on Monday, a representative from Nexperia’s Dutch team reiterated a statement from November, maintaining that the company had “continued to offer alternative supply chain solutions to mitigate disruption”, including “selling and shipping wafers to Nexperia customers directly”.
Representatives from Nexperia’s Chinese unit and Wingtech did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The split within the company has led to severe bottlenecks for automotive supply chains, given Nexperia’s role as a major supplier of chips to the industry. The corporate fallout has also expanded into legal channels: Wingtech announced in May that it had filed a lawsuit against Nexperia and three of its executives under China’s anti-foreign sanctions law.
At the same time, diplomatic channels have sought to de-escalate the commercial friction. Following an April meeting with Shen Bo, China’s ambassador to the Netherlands, the Dutch government’s economic minister Heleen Herbert said both sides had agreed the dispute should be “solved between the two companies without government interference”.
Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten is set to visit China next spring, the first by a Dutch leader since the Nexperia saga plunged bilateral ties into crisis, the South China Morning Post reported in July.


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The Chinese division is betting on a high-stakes, home-grown supply chain pivot to bypass suspended European wafer shipments


The Chinese division is betting on a high-stakes, home-grown supply chain pivot to bypass suspended European wafer shipments.


Nexperia’s China unit pivots to domestic 12-inch wafers in pursuit of ‘100%’ independence

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The Chinese division is betting on a high-stakes, home-grown supply chain pivot to bypass suspended European wafer shipments

The Chinese division is betting on a high-stakes, home-grown supply chain pivot to bypass suspended European wafer shipments