(Photo : Samsung GALAXY SIII)

South Korea's biggest company, Samsung Electronics Co, continues expanding in China as it announced building a packaging and testing facility worth $500 million in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province.

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The $500-million investment comes in addition to the $7 billion investment that Samsung poured into Xi'an last year to build a chip complex. Last January, the Korean company also injected $1.7 billion in Kunshan.

According to the official China Daily website, Samsung, the world's largest maker of handsets, memory chips, and televisions, signed an agreement with officials of Xi'an Hi-Tech Industry Development Zone for the project that will comprise assembly line of packaging and testing of flash memory chips as well as solid-state disks.

Investment to Make Xi'an A Semiconductor Industry Cluster

Local officials said the new investment by Samsung will make Xi'an become a cluster for the semiconductor industry. The Xi'an High-Tech Industry Development Zone is one of the largest industrial zones in center and western China.

Samsung Chief Executive and Vice Chairman Kwon Oh-hyun said the new investment will the company build a complete industrial chain, instead of relying mainly on its South Korean manufacturing facilities.

The packaging and testing facility is expected to begin construction in January 2014 with target completion by the end of next year, Samsung said.

The new facility will sit on a total floor area of 70,000 square meters, said An Jianli, official at the Xi'an Hi-tech Industry Development Zone.

$7-Billion Plant to Start Trial Production

The South Korean electronic giant also announced that its $7 billion plant in Xi'an will start trial production in February 2014. The plant focuses on the production of the world's most advanced 10-nanometer high-end flash memory chips.

It will be the second of its kind by Samsung that uses state-of-the-art chip technology. The first plant was built in 1996 in Austin, Texas. Samsung has predicted that China will account for more than half of the global market share in the semiconductor industry by 2015.