Taiwan Passive Components Orders Robust Ahead of Lunar New Year

Taiwan’s passive components makers have seen an influx of orders from clients who are seeking to thicken inventories before the Lunar New Year holiday in February, according to industry sources.

The clients are looking to keep production lines running at high capacity in first-quarter 2021 with prospects of shipments ramping up quarter by quarter, said the sources.

Makers including Yageo and Walsin Technology have seen their inventory levels drop to less than 30 days as a result of strong demand from clients, and even the majority of their current inventories have been already booked by clients and will be delivered any time upon request from customers, the sources.

Orders may be strong, but delivery for shipments is a major problem due to shortages of upstream materials or insufficient capacity support from supply chain partners. To counter, they have moved to find new materials suppliers and give them long-term orders since second-half 2020, the sources said.

On another front, assemblers also must manage to secure as much as possible the supply of passive components such as MLCC, resistors and inductors, apart from diverse ICs, memory chips, panels and PCBs, as shortages of any components will disrupt production and shipments, the sources continued.