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Four workers killed as steel structure gives way at TSMC's 2nm fab site in Kaohsiung
Contract workers fell with steel parts from the third floor of the chipmaker's Fab 22 construction site. A fourth man died in hospital on Wednesday morning, and steel hoisting work has been halted.
Key points
- The death toll at TSMC's Fab 22 construction site rose to four on Wednesday morning.
- Investigators suspect a bolt on a steel connecting plate snapped during hoisting work.
- TSMC has halted the related work, and labour inspectors are looking into cause and liability.
Four construction workers have died after a steel structure gave way at the site of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s newest advanced chip plant in Kaohsiung.
The men, all employed by a Taiwanese contractor, were working on the third floor of Phase 4 of Fab 22 in Nanzih district, part of the Southern Taiwan Science Park, on Tuesday afternoon. They were welding and hoisting a steel beam on the outer structure when it broke away, and they fell with the steel parts. The Kaohsiung fire department received the call at 4:53 pm and sent 10 vehicles and 22 personnel.
Medical staff at the site gave first aid and all four were taken to hospital. Three were declared dead on Tuesday night. The fourth, a man surnamed Huang, had been in intensive care in a critical condition and died on Wednesday morning.
What went wrong
The Southern Taiwan Science Park Bureau said a bolt on a connecting plate in the steel structure appeared to have snapped during the lifting operation, breaking the plate and bringing the beam down. The cause has not been confirmed. The bureau has sent labour inspectors to establish what happened and who is liable, and any penalties will follow under Taiwan’s Occupational Safety and Health Act. It said it was also helping the victims’ families.
TSMC said the area fell within the contractor’s scope of work and that it had stopped the related work on its own. Steel hoisting at the site is on hold, and no date has been set for it to resume.
A plant at the heart of the 2nm push
Fab 22 is one of the most important sites in the global chip industry. TSMC began high-volume production on its 2-nanometre process there in the last quarter of 2025, and the complex is planned in five phases with total investment of more than NT$1.5 trillion (about $46 billion). Kaohsiung’s deputy mayor has said Phase 4 construction began in August 2025, with operations expected in the last quarter of 2027.
The accident comes days after TSMC reported a 69 per cent jump in quarterly profit on the back of demand for its most advanced chips. To keep up, the company has sharply increased the number of plants it builds each year, crowding more workers and overlapping projects onto its sites.
Cliff Hou, TSMC’s senior vice president and deputy co-chief operating officer, has acknowledged that this raises the risk. He said earlier this year that the contractor lost-time injury rate had fallen by about 42 per cent from its peak, and the company has made a contractor’s safety record a criterion for winning work.
Several earlier accidents at TSMC construction sites in Taiwan since September 2024 have each killed one worker. Tuesday’s collapse is the worst so far.
What happens next
Inspectors’ findings will decide whether the contractor or TSMC faces penalties. The company has not said whether the halt will delay Phase 4, which is due to add capacity for its most advanced chips.