TDK Corp. has agreed to buy Renesas Semiconductor Manufacturing's Tsuruoka Factory, as it continues to strengthen its electronic components business based on magnetic materials technology. Renesas Electronics, and Renesas Semiconductor Manufacturing, a wholly owned subsidiary of Renesas Electronics, have signed a basic agreement under which Renesas Semiconductor Manufacturing's Tsuruoka Factory will be transferred to TDK. The three companies target to conclude a definitive agreement on the transfer by the end of February 2016, and are currently negotiating the details, including the handover date and the transfer (reemployment) of personnel currently employed at the Tsuruoka Factory.

TDK considers its three priority markets to be the ICT market, which encompasses products such as smartphones; the automotive market, which includes hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles; and the industrial equipment/energy market, which covers applications such as wind power generation and solar power generation. To assure future growth, TDK is working to take thin-film technology built up over many years for the manufacture of magnetic heads for hard disk drives and extend it laterally into electronic components.

The Tsuruoka Factory has been used to manufacture system LSIs, ICs, transistors, etc.