Major Apple supplier TSMC is in talks with partners to spend up to €10 billion ($11 billion) to build a chip fabrication plant in Saxony, Germany, Bloomberg News reports Thursday citing “people familiar with the matter.”
Jillian Deutsch and Alberto Nardelli for Bloomberg News:
The planned venture between TSMC, NXP Semiconductors NV, Robert Bosch GmbH and Infineon Technologies AG will include state subsidies and would have a budget of at least €7 billion, with the total investment likely closer to €10 billion, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. A final decision has not been made and the plans could still change, they said.
TSMC Chairman Mark Liu told shareholders in 2021 that the chipmaker had started assessments on setting up manufacturing operations in Germany, Europe’s largest economy. The proposed European plant would focus on chips for the automotive sector, Chief Executive Officer C. C. Wei has said.
Similar projects in Germany have sought as much as 40% of their funding from subsidies as the European Union attempts to double its share of global semiconductor production by 2030. In April, the EU passed the €43 billion Chips Act to boost domestic output after supply chain disruptions during the Covid-19 pandemic and as tensions between the US and China escalate.
Any state aid would require approval from the European Commission, and the consortium is in talks with officials over the size of the package, the people said. In Japan, where TSMC is spending $8.6 billion with partners to build a plant, it will receive about half of the funding from the government.
TSMC is Taiwan’s biggest company and Apple Inc.’s main chipmaker.
MacDailyNews Take: The more chip production can be diversified, the better!
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Notice they know how to properly diversify. Unlike loser Tim Cook, they are not diversifying int hostile s-holes like Vietnam and India. Cook should be sued by shareholders for failing basic diversity.
Agree, Cook has no clue how to smartly and safely diversify in friendly countries. He is addicted to MASSIVE profit returns above all else and near slave labor it seems, gets it done. Now striving to replicate the China manufacturing model in other marginal and certainly NOT risk adverse countries.
If Apple and urban planners devised a state of the art factories with living city quarters there are plenty of locations and politicians accepting of the employment numbers and tax revenue here at home.
Apple is producing iPhones in more than one location. Bring it back to the USA and Apple would not be limited to the number of locations. Spread out in the four corners of the country and could easily shift the billions spent on stock buybacks for a time to get it done, or current manufacturer locate here. In the process, saving on shipping costs to the largest U.S. market and possibly others such as Europe and South America markets.
Food for thought…
Build iPhones in the USA……fantasy…….
Can’t get youngsters to get off the couch much less put together iPhones for $20/hr.
But you can always dream…….
Musk does it for far more complicated product. Also, Foxxcon has completely automated factories to do it. It can be done. You’re just wrong.