In recent years, as global requirements for green semiconductor manufacturing and carbon emissions have become increasingly stringent, coupled with the rising demand for supply chain autonomy in China's domestic semiconductor industry, emission reduction and domestic substitution have become two core considerations for wafer fabs when procuring equipment. Traditional wafer fabs often separate the procurement of facility wastewater and exhaust gas treatment from front-end main process equipment, which can lead to issues such as excessive energy consumption and low system coordination efficiency during operations. How to reduce long-term operating costs while ensuring technical compliance has become a key direction for the iteration of current equipment and facility technologies.
At the Industrial Expo on October 12, 2026, Tu Keyun, Executive Vice President of SANCODA, gave an exclusive interview to eefocus reporters, elaborating on the company's strategic logic of extending from facility systems to ancillary equipment and chemical recycling.
SANCODA's business deployment at this exhibition primarily revolves around ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance). On the facility side, the company mainly addresses process exhaust gas treatment for semiconductor enterprises, implementing ultra-fast processing and low emissions. On the main process ancillary equipment side, it covers Local Scrubbers, temperature control equipment, vacuum pumps, molecular pumps, and cryogenic pumps, focusing on low energy consumption and high processing efficiency, directly benchmarking against imported overseas brands. The "Scrubber and Vacuum Pump Integrated Machine," launched by the company earlier this year, integrates vacuum pumps with process exhaust gas treatment equipment. In special processes that generate large amounts of hydrogen, such as epitaxy, this equipment avoids safety risks associated with long-distance transmission and reduces energy consumption while ensuring operational safety.
Unlike traditional chemical material suppliers, SANCODA chooses to enter the chemical sector through recycling systems before producing corresponding materials. This recycling and regeneration system interfaces directly with clients within the fab, capable of purifying and recovering approximately 70% to 80% of waste liquids, after which only about 20% new liquid needs to be added for continuous circulation. This approach of establishing recycling systems within the fab to avoid secondary transportation already has mature precedents among overseas manufacturers; major players like TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) and Micron are already promoting such solutions. SANCODA is introducing this mature industry model to the domestic market and currently has sufficient and mature local implementation cases in fields such as semiconductor displays.
The evolution of these businesses reveals that SANCODA's overall strategy lies in "product extension + industry extension." The company initially started with green facility systems, then extended forward to ancillary equipment such as Local Scrubbers and temperature controls, and laterally to chemical supply and recycling/regeneration. At the industry level, it has gradually expanded from semiconductor displays and integrated circuits to the new energy sector.
Tu Keyun particularly emphasized that SANCODA is not a system integrator but a manufacturing enterprise. The company had factories established in its early days and transitioned from pure product manufacturing to facility system technology business in 2012. Currently, core VOC treatment equipment in facility systems, such as Rotor Concentrators and Regenerative Thermal Oxidizers (RTO), are self-manufactured by the company. In terms of resource allocation, the mature facility line currently focuses on optimizing design and policy compliance; the equipment line is the R&D focus, having developed six major series platforms, leading to the commissioning of the Shanghai Jiading factory in March last year; the chemical business primarily involves technical cooperation with Japanese manufacturers for localized production in China.
At the supply chain level, to meet future domestic substitution demands, SANCODA has signed a global strategic agreement with Wolong Electric, a leading domestic motor manufacturer, to jointly develop high-efficiency motors and variable frequency drives. Additionally, machining processes are handled by self-built factories, with plans to gradually increase the domestic substitution ratio for components such as sensors.
Facing homogeneous competition in the domestic equipment market, Tu Keyun believes that competing solely on bare machine delivery prices easily leads to vicious competition. To address this, SANCODA advocates for clients to conduct "Full Lifecycle Management" assessments, suggesting they evaluate over an 8 to 10-year cycle by comprehensively considering bare machine price, operating energy costs, maintenance fees, and processing efficiency. By reducing energy consumption through technological optimization, the savings achieved during the equipment's operational period can often offset the initial procurement cost of the bare machine, which serves as the company's technical barrier to avoiding low-price competition.
Discussing market conditions, Tu Keyun stated that although some institutions previously predicted that China's semiconductor equipment business might decline due to a reduction in the number of new wafer fab constructions, since the second quarter of this year, both memory and logic wafer fabs in China have been increasing investments and expanding new facilities, indicating that wafer demand remains tight.
Regarding global expansion, SANCODA went overseas in 2024 and established its headquarters in Singapore, serving as a hub for overseas R&D and sales. Its business has gradually extended to Southeast Asian countries, with plans to further expand into the European market in the future. Southeast Asia and Europe have higher requirements for low-carbon standards and carbon emission charges. The ESG compliance and low-carbon R&D capabilities accumulated by the company overseas are accelerating their feedback into building its domestic market business.