An employee showcases a semiconductor integrated circuit at an industry expo on October 31. Photo: VCG

A silicon wafer producer based in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, unveiled a plant over the weekend that can challenge foreign suppliers' monopoly of the important industrial input used to produce chips, local news site zjol.cn reported over the weekend. 

As the new plant will augment China's existing capacity in silicon wafer manufacturing, industry experts said there is still a long way to go from becoming a plant providing quality suppliers to downstream manufacturers.

The plant that Hangzhou-based Ferro Tec unveiled on Saturday has the largest production capacity in China, with target output of 350,000 8-inch wafers per month, according to the zol.cn report. 

A wafer is a single piece of semiconductor material used to make semiconductor chips.

The plant has achieved mass production of 8-inch wafers and will, after some fine-tuning and completing the certification process, begin to churn out 12-inch wafers by the end of this year. 

The output of 12-inch wafers is expected to reach 30,000 slices a month in 2020. 

The added supply of large wafers will ease the reliance of domestic semiconductor companies on foreign suppliers and drive the development of China's semiconductor industry by filling a supply chain void, according to the report. 

Geng Bo, vice secretary-general of the China Solid State Lighting Alliance, a semiconductor industry association, told the Global Times on Sunday that it usually takes about two years for a plant to get all of its issues fixed and agree on supply contracts to downstream companies that use the wafers.

China is the world's top semiconductor market. 

Chinese companies have been investing in integrated circuit production for several years, and their cumulative investment exceeds the aggregate sum of the EU and Japan, according to media reports.