Semiconductor Construction News roundup September 2024

September was dominated by Intel's news on the smoothing out their global construction plans. This has had a significant impact on Europe with the pushes of the planned German and Poland facilities which came after the announcements of the pausing of the fit out program in Israel and the cancellation of the other RnD facilities planned for Europe. While the US expansion plans continue with the injection of funding from the US Military and a potential $5B investment from Apollo the Intel European Expansion plan is now officially on hold.

This retrenchment will have a temporary impact on European project pipeline but may also have a secondary positive impact by reducing the pressure on the supply chain to provide labour, plant and materials. While Intel's announcements are a hit for the Semicon construction industry, there are a lot of projects that are still proceeding.

This month we will focus on expansion plans announced by countries, clients and suppliers. and some other interesting news from the Semicon Construction industry.

Who has plans to build?

As said in a previous post, funding leads to construction so here are some of the latest announcements to move the industry forward. Did you know that, Japan, Finland, Ireland, Spain, Vietnam, Italy, and Lithuania are developing semiconductor ecosystems? I knew of some, but Lithuania...who knew!

The IEEE notes that U.S. Fab Capacity could triple in a decade and the first round of Chips Funding for Commercial Wafer manufacturing has been released to enable Polar Semiconductor to expand its facility in Minnesota. This is important as this is the first large cap release of funds from the Chips act. Meanwhile TSMC approves US$29.6 billion capex for capacity expansions, indicating a strong push towards more fab construction

Another positive indication are the expansion plans being developed by the supply chain. Arcadis have opened a semiconductor design center in Ireland to support European semiconductor projects, Lam have announced a new RnD center and Tel are expanding operations to support development in India.

All are positive indications of a growing industry and we appreciate the support.

And then there were more, latest project announcements

Even with some project delays a number of new facilities have started construction or have come online. Here is a selection of Septembers global announcements.

In Europe, Pragmatic is looking to expand it's UK production lines while Globalwafers are considering expanding in Denmark and Italy. Polymatech and the ECM group are considering a joint venture in Grenoble France and In an interesting move, TSMC and Samsung have made early indications that the are considering building factories in the United Arab Emirates.

Unfortunately there has been some bad news in that the only fab remaining in Belgium may be closing as the previous Belgian buyer is to back out

In India, the Indian Cabinet approves Kaynes chip assembly plant, In other news Tower Semiconductors $10B plan has reached the next stage of approval. India is to get first national security semiconductor fabrication plant via the creation of the Kolkata Power Center by GlobalFoundries and NXP is to invest more than $1B to boost its R&D Efforts.

In other regions, NXP/VIS have received approval for their joint venture fab in Singapore. TSMC are to build a third plant in Japan, SMIC are to build 4 additional fabs in China and Samsung are to invest $1.8b in a manufacturing facility in Korea.

In the AMR region, Micron has announced is opening of a New York Headquarters to support the development of its Clay country Mega project. TSMC has announced that its Arizona plant has achieved matching with it's Taiwan production yields, a good sign for future expansion and Polar Semiconductor has announced plans to expand its Minnesota facility.

Semiconductor Construction Sustainability news:

Wafer fabs are major consumers of resources but there are amazing developments being made to reduce the carbon footprint of the industry. There is a lot of work to be done to reduce Semiconductor Water Reclaim rates and Scope 3 emissions generated by IC packaging requirements

Here are some of the solutions that have been generated or proposed by our industry. (I even took some idea's from Data Centers!!)

The Irish state has taken the positive move of demanding that all Publicly funded projects must now use Low carbon Cement. TSMC have developed a program to help its supply chain to develop their sustainability programs and Edwards Vacuum have developed a breakthrough fuel cell to enable EUV lithography to recycle Hydrogen.

In a bold move by our friends in the Data center world, Oracle have proposed the usage of Small Nuclear reactors (SNR's) as a means to decoupling their facilities from the grid and Microsoft have gone one further by purchasing a power agreement with Constellation that will reactivate a Nuclear power plant for its upcoming facilities. Is this something our industry should be doing?

Finally some recommended Reads for Mega Build Project Managers

Last Month we talked about How big things get done by Brent Flyberg and Dan Gardner, This month we will go one step deeper and recommend the Paper, Uniqueness Bias:?Why It Matters, How to Curb It and, based on Girish's recommendation last month, Chip War by Chris Miller. (Note: These are not affiliate links.). Some great lessons for mega builders in both publications.

Wrap Up.

Remember, only read the parts you are interested in and if you have any that you wish to share, send them to me and I will pass them on. If I have missed any key announcements, please add a link in the comments and I will update at the first opportunity.

Until next month, remember #wearefabbuliders.