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According to reports, Toshiba and US partner SanDisk plan to invest £6.2 billion in two new manufacturing facilities in Japan, which are slated to begin production of NAND flash memory in April 2009.

The electronics maker already has four plants producing flash memory, but demand for the products is surging as sales of mobile phones and digital cameras rockets.

Toshiba currently has the capacity to produce around 200,000 wafers a month, and could reach 410,000 wafers in the middle of 2009, even without the two new proposed plants.

Together with production from the two planned facilities, Toshiba could theoretically manufacture the equivalent of 800,000 wafers a month, according to figures reported by Nikkei.

The global flash memory market was worth £6.2 billion in 2006, according to survey firm iSuppli. Nikkei claims that Samsung held a 45% share of this market, followed by 26% for Toshiba.