SEOUL, April 22 (Reuters) – SK Hynix said on Wednesday it plans ‌to invest 19 trillion won ($12.85 ‌billion) in a new manufacturing plant in ​South Korea for advanced packaging, to meet rising global demand for AI memory, with construction starting this month.

The ‌Nvidia supplier, ⁠one of the world’s largest memory chipmakers, has been expanding ⁠production capacity to keep up with strong demand for artificial intelligence ​data centres.

The ​South Korean ​chipmaker said in ‌a statement that the new fab plant will be dedicated to advanced packaging, a process essential for manufacturing AI memory products such as high-bandwidth ‌memory (HBM) chips.

Earlier this ​year, SK Hynix said ​it has ​accelerated capacity expansion, including ‌bringing forward the opening ​of a ​new memory chip plant in South Korea, as it seeks to ​meet ‌surging demand. ($1 = 1,478.1000 won)

(Reporting by Heekyong ​Yang, Hyunjoo Jin, Heejin KimEditing ​by Ed Davies)