It will be the first Taiwanese factory to land in Europe. Sassone Dresden will start producing semiconductors for the Taiwanese TSMC for the first time in Europe, thus reaffirming its role as the capital of Europe's Silicon Valley. On the occasion of the inaugural ceremony of the future gigafactory, the new European semiconductor manufacturing company (ESMC), the group announced a investment of 3,5 billion euros for the first factory, which will be active by 2027. The operation, which will allow to create 2 direct jobs (up to 11 thousand with related activities) is co-financed by the German government which has allocated funds of 5 billion euros with the approval of the European Commission as part of the EU Chips Act.
Specialized production of automotive chips
The plant will specialize in automotive chips and will have a production capacity of 40 silicon wafers per month. The goal of the Scholz government and the European Commission is to make the gigafactory the European hub for semiconductor production. Also for this reason, in addition to 5 billion in public and private funds, the project envisaged involvement in j of three European companies: the German ones Infeon e Bosch and Dutch nxp, which will each hold 10% of the capital and bring investments to 10 billion.
The European plan with a package of 115 billion
The funds approved by the European Commission for the start-up of the plant are part of a broader plan, which included a package of 115 billion to be reserved for the production of semiconductors under the EU Chips Act of February 2022. “This factory will be one of a kind,” said the President of the European Commission Ursula Von Der Leyen at the symbolic inauguration of the plant in Dresden. “It will create products that exist nowhere else in Europe” because it will allow any customer to place orders for specific chips. Tsmc, main rival of the giant Intel, produces chips for Apple and Nvidia. The German government and the European Commission have repeatedly underlined as a success the fact of having attracted the giant to Silicon Saxony, where recently the American company Globalfoundries also announced that it wanted to double production (today at 200 thousand million wafers) in German factories.
In Italy Silicon Box has focused on Novara
Meanwhile, the official communication of the choice of has arrived in Italy Novara for the new settlement of Silicon Box, the Singaporean group that produces chiplets. The choice was made by the Singapore group for essentially three reasons. The first is the territorial proximity to strategic partners (Memc, the Italian expression of the multinational Global Wafers), the second is the complexity of the possible purchase of land in Vigasio and finally that the chosen territory is less developed than Novara and indeed dominated by a "context agricultural". In the process of choosing Italy, the Novara area and the specific project to be carried out. Silicon Box used two advisors, Cleary Gottlieb for the legal side and Boston Consulting Group for the industrial side, who suggested a site located near the Novara Ovest motorway toll booth, 2 km as the crow flies from the company's factory. Memc (which produces silicon wafers), almost next to the Amazon logistics hub and with the Agognate train station which connects people in 7 minutes with Novara Centrale. But above all with the proximity of Malpensa airport 20 minutes away since all the necessary goods arrive and depart by plane.
