Toshiba Corporation today announced that it is going ahead with a forward-looking plan for a new memory fabrication facility in Kitakami, Iwate prefecture. Toshiba Memory Corporation (TMC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Toshiba, will establish a company to operate the facility, and invest approximately 7 billion yen in site preparation and initial construction work in FY2017. The new facility, announced on September 6, 2017, will produce BiCS Flash, TMC's proprietary flash memory. It will be TMC's seventh fab.Continued strong demand for flash memory from data centers and enterprise servers has already prompted TMC to expand its memory production facilities at Yokkaichi Operations in Mie Prefecture. With Fab 6 under construction and scheduled for completion at the end of 2018, TMC is now looking further into the future, and moving forward with the construction of an additional 3D flash memory clean room to meet anticipated growth in demand. TMC will complete acquisition of land for the new facility and start site preparation in February next year, and make initial orders for construction materials and equipment at the same time. Detailed decisions on the construction schedule and pace of facility investment at Kitakami will be made in FY2018 and after, in line with market trends. TMC will establish a new company, Toshiba Memory Iwate Corporation, to manage the start-up and operation of the facility.(Editor's note: It seems that Toshiba's mainly out of the water, due in no small part to its $17.7 billion cash infusion from investor Bain Capital. Toshiba's Fab 6 isn't completed yet, but the company is making sure it keeps its pace ahead of the competition in ramping up its production capabilities. It will take a while until this Fab 7 enters production, but this way the company can look ahead with confidence in its ability to ramp up production. Western Digital and Toshiba's partnership forges ahead, and it seems both giants are working on an agreement towards joint collaboration on the workings of this Fab 7).