ISTANBUL: South Korean chip supplier SK Hynix announced Friday it will invest around 9.4 trillion won ($6.8 billion) in building a new semiconductor manufacturing plant in the country. The company plans to begin construction of the first fab, or the fabrication plant, in South Korea's emerging chip hub Yongin cluster in March 2025 and complete it by May 2027. Yongin Semiconductor Cluster, which was approved in March 2021, is the country's first cluster of semiconductor businesses, and considered as a pillar of South Korea's semiconductor industry. It is expected to increase the production capability of the country's semiconductor industry, which is vital to it economy and export, and to bring positive effects in stabilizing the global supply network, according to Invest Korea. "The Yongin Cluster, which will be built on a 4.15 million square meter site in Wonsam-myeon, Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, is currently under site preparation and infrastructure construction," SK Hynix said in a statement. The compan y aims to build four fabs that will produce next-generation semiconductors, and a semiconductor cooperation complex with more than 50 small local companies. It targets to complete the remaining three fabs sequentially to grow the Yongin Cluster into a "Global AI semiconductor production base," according to the statement. SK Hynix supplies 5th generation high-bandwidth memory chips to American chipmaker Nvidia. The company announced Wednesday it saw revenues at 16.4233 trillion won, operating profit at 5.4685 trillion won, and net profit at 4.12 trillion won in the second quarter of this year. Source: Anadolu Agency