SK hynix Plans Major Cheongju Expansion for NAND and Packaging Capacity

SK hynix has outlined a large long-term investment plan for Cheongju, South Korea, including a new NAND fabrication facility and additional advanced packaging capacity. According to the company, roughly KRW 80 trillion is aimed at the M17 NAND fab and about KRW 20 trillion at the P&T7 packaging facility, with packaging targeted for completion by the end of 2027 and fab operations expected in the first half of 2029. The company links the expansion to rising AI demand for enterprise SSDs, NAND flash, HBM, and server DRAM. For RamTrend, the key takeaway is that AI infrastructure growth is broadening demand beyond accelerator memory alone and is influencing upstream storage and packaging investment decisions. If demand continues to outpace supply as SK hynix suggests, the investment supports a constructive pricing backdrop for parts of the NAND and enterprise memory market over the medium term, though new volume from this project is still years away.