TSMC Will Build a Semiconductor Plant in Germany

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Europe|Taiwan’s Chip Giant Will Build a Plant in Germany

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/08/world/europe/tsmc-germany-chips-semiconductors.html

TSMC, the world’s largest maker of semiconductors, said it would invest $3.8 billion in a joint project with three European industrial firms.

Two men, one with a white shirt and a blue lanyard, look at a large shiny disc in a display case that has the TSMC logo on the front.
TSMC announced a joint project to build a production facility for microchips in eastern Germany; the plant would be its first in Europe.Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Melissa EddyJohn Liu

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company said on Tuesday that it would team up with three European technology firms to build a chip-making facility in eastern Germany as part of efforts to further diversify its production locations.

TSMC, the world’s largest maker of semiconductors, said it would invest 3.5 billion euros ($3.8 billion) and own 70 percent of the joint venture, in Dresden. The three other companies — Robert Bosch and Infineon Technologies, both based in Germany, and NXP Semiconductors of the Netherlands — will each control 10 percent.

The combined private and public investment, “including strong support from the European Union and German government,” is expected to total €10 billion, the company said.

The plant would be TSMC’s first location in Europe, and it represents a win for Germany, which has been seeking out manufacturers of microchips, the tiny devices essential for the country’s large automotive industry and for building countless other devices.

“This investment in Dresden demonstrates TSMC’s commitment to serving our customers’ strategic capacity and technology needs,” C.C. Wei, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement. Construction would begin next year, with chip production expected to begin in 2027.

The semiconductors produced in Dresden will be not the company’s latest technology but older generations of its chips, which the auto industry prefers. TSMC said the facility would produce up to 40,000 wafers a month, each of which can hold hundreds of microchips.

Germany is spending billions of euros to attract chipmakers. For the TSMC project, the government has pledged €5 billion, the German financial daily Handelsblatt reported. The government’s economy ministry did not respond to a request for information on the amount.

Intel, the Silicon Valley chip-making giant, will receive €10 billion in state subsidies to build a plant in Germany. The government pledged hundreds of millions more to attract Wolfspeed, a North Carolina-based maker of silicon carbide chips.

The financial incentives are necessary, some say, because Germany is plagued by some of the highest energy prices in Europe and a byzantine bureaucracy that has caused many industries to reconsider investments in the country, despite its strong automotive sector.

Another obstacle could be finding enough skilled employees. Many German manufacturers say they are facing a dire lack of qualified workers, especially in the southern and eastern regions, including Saxony.

Last year Saxony recorded more than 25,600 job openings for which there were no qualified applicants, especially in electronics, computer science and software development.

Attracting qualified workers from other countries could be especially difficult, because the state of Saxony is home to a large and vocal far-right faction that has helped to cement anti-immigrant sentiment. According to the Else-Frenkel-Brunswik-Institute, which has been monitoring Germans’ attitudes about democracy since 2002, nearly half of people surveyed in the eastern regions last year believed that foreigners were coming to Germany only to take advantage of the social welfare system.

Germany passed a law in June that would make it easier for companies to attract qualified foreigners to come work in the country. The law will take effect in November.

The facility in Dresden, which TSMC will operate, will be the company’s fourth outside Taiwan, with construction already underway on two factories in Arizona and one in Japan.

But the Arizona plants have faced setbacks, and the company has deployed hundreds of Taiwanese technicians to expedite the process. Last month, TSMC delayed the expected start date by a year, to 2025. Internal tensions over cultural differences have also surfaced between TSMC and American workers.

On Tuesday, regional leaders in Germany hailed the latest news from the company. “Welcome to Silicon Saxony, TSMC,” said Michael Kretschmer, the governor of Saxony. He said the announcement was the result of “several years of discussions and negotiations carried out in a spirit of trust.”

Don Clark contributed reporting.

A correction was made on 

Aug. 8, 2023

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the production capacity of the planned TSMC factory in Germany. It will produce up to 40,000 wafers a month, each of which can contain hundreds of microchips. It will not produce 40,000 microchips a month. The article also misidentified the country where NXP Semiconductors is based. NXP is in the Netherlands, not Germany.

How we handle corrections

Melissa Eddy is a correspondent based in Berlin who covers German politics, social issues and culture. She came to Germany as a Fulbright scholar in 1996, and previously worked for The Associated Press in Frankfurt, Vienna and the Balkans. More about Melissa Eddy

John Liu joined The Times in 2021 and covers news in China. Previously, he was a reporter for The Myanmar Times, and wrote about Taiwan for international outlets. More about John Liu

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