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There are many factories around the world, but few look anything like semiconductor fabs.
These places – fabrication plants, to give them their full name – are otherworldly in all sorts of respects.
Bathed in yellow light and populated by workers wearing head-to-toe white suits, visiting one of them feels like entering the world depicted by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Up until recently, few were aware that the UK hosts one of these spaceship-style plants as well – yet the Newport Wafer Fab (NWF) has for decades been a quietly important part of this constellation of critical locations, producing the tiny silicon chips that help make the modern world go round.
But in recent months, after Nexperia – a Netherlands-headquartered firm with Chinese owners – agreed a deal to take over NWF, this place has suddenly found itself thrust into the limelight.
The latest of these headlines has concerned a decision by Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng to review the deal, which went through last year, on national security grounds.
The original deadline for his decision was last week, but – as Boris Johnson’s government imploded – the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy asked for a 45-day deadline to make its decision.
So the fate of the plant, which sits in a campus just outside the South Wales city of Newport, hangs in the balance, even as the Tory Party wrestles its way towards a new leader.
And as often happens when stories like this hit the front pages and everyone is exceedingly busy doing other stuff, much of the nuance and detail has been lost along the way.
Some claim the plant would be bankrupt without the Chinese; some say it is so small and piddling compared to silicon giants like Intel or Taiwanese group TSMC that we really shouldn’t be making so much fuss about it; others say the chips being made there are so important for national security that its sale would compromise Britain’s military;…
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Source : skynews
