After a chaotic ride, the saga of the Newport Wafer Fab may finally be ending as Pennsylvania-based Vishay Intertechnology Inc. has officially been approved by the U.K. government to buy the country’s largest semiconductor factory.
According to a report from the BBC, the buyout of the Newport Wafer assets from Nexperia, a subsidiary of Shanghai-listed Wingtech, for $177 million. The deal will secure more than 400 jobs.
In November of 2022, the U.K. government ordered Nexperia to sell its majority stake due to concerns about national security that the Chinese government may hold influence over the semiconductor facility. Since then, numerous companies were rumored to be interested in purchasing the facility.
It took about four months for the approval to come but now the Duffryn Industrial Estate has now been branded Newport Vishay.
Future plans
Newport Wafer Fab is located on 28 acres and is an automotive certified, 200 mm semiconductor fab. The move by Vishay is part of its goals to invest about $1.2 billion in capacity over the next three years to position the company to capitalize on the automotive and sustainability sectors.
“While this transaction is supplemental to our capex investment strategy, adding Newport Wafer Fab to our manufacturing footprint will be instrumental to achieving our goal of expanding capacity for our customers and to accelerating our SiC strategy,” said Joel Smejkal, president and CEO of Vishay.
Vishay said it will expand the site to include more room for its silicon carbide (SiC) and other compound semiconductor capacity — power chips that are used in renewable energy and electric vehicles. Additionally, it will collaborate with the Compound Semiconductor Cluster in South Wales as well as other universities and development partners in the region.
Long history
Since the Newport Wafer Fab began as Inmos in 1980, the facility has changed hands many times throughout the years. However, the most recent events have been wild by those standards.
After initially selling the factory to Nexperia, the U.K. faced criticism from inside and outside the government due to selling a national security asset to a Chinese-based subsidiary. Semiconductors and the chip manufacturing supply chain has become a matter of national security for many nations as these devices are the core of smartphones, household appliances, automotive vehicles and more.
The move to allow the sale to a China-owned company was controversial due to the U.K.’s concerns regarding Chinese ownership of the fab and previous issues involving Huawei and national security.
Once the decision to force Nexperia to sell the fab had been made, the U.K. government considered selling the fab to a U.S.-based consortium.
Nine U.S. congressmen, including Michael McCaul, a member of the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden asking him to prevent the sale of Newport Wafer Fab to a Chinese-owned company. The congressmen said that China should not be allowed to gain control of any segment of the supply chain as important as semiconductors in the U.K.
Last year, the drama continued over the facility as ST Microelectronics and pure-play foundry GlobalFoundries (GF) were potentially looking to acquire the facility. The companies were part of as many as 10 potential bidders on the fab after the U.K. government ordered Nexperia to sell.
