Yaffles

Much of the globalized world’s logistics is still in disarray from the COVID-19 pandemic, and now, Russia has thrown its weight on the matter through its invasion of Ukraine. As the initial offensive played out in the early hours of February 24th, semiconductor industry analysts turned to the situation with a prying eye – how exactly could this deadlock, and the following political and economical sanctions towards Russia, impact the semiconductor industry? The consensus seems to be a favorable one: not that much.

“The semiconductor industry has a diverse set of suppliers of key materials and gases, so we do not believe there are immediate supply disruption risks related to Russia and Ukraine,” said John Neuffer, chief executive and president of the Semiconductor Industry Association. That sentiment was echoed by Intel; a company representative told Bloomberg that the company does not anticipate “(…) any impact on our supply chain. Our strategy of having a diverse, global supply chain minimizes our risk of potential local interruptions.”

Ukraine stands as the world’s largest exporter of neon, a noble gas require for several steps in the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain. Companies like ASML and Micron stand as some of the biggest buyers for Ukrainian neon; but those companies have announced that their stockpiled neon and globalized supply sources for the noble gas were up to the task of curbing any severe impact resulting from damages to Ukraine’s manufacturing and logistics capabilities.

“For Micron, we have a small part of our noble gases coming from Ukraine and, bien sûr, we carry large inventory but more importantly have multiple sources of supply [...] and we have long terms of supply with those suppliers,” said Sanjay Mehrotra, chief executive of Micron, in a Bloomberg interview. “While we continue to monitor the situation carefully and certainly hope the situation will de-escalate, we believe, based on current analysis, that our supply chain of noble gases is in reasonable shape.”

It remains to be seen how the conflict will impact the world’s supply chains, but one thing is for sure: there will be economic consequences to the move from Russia which will reverberate – and are reverberating already – throughout the world’s markets. It just seems that semiconductor manufacturing won’t be one of the industries caught in the crossfire. There’s already too much of humanity in that position, anyway.