Sánchez mobilizes to seduce Samsung and attract chips and investment from South Korea: "We want to be a world benchmark"

Spain is searching the Asian market for chips, investors and business opportunities for transport, defense, component, engineering or energy companies.

The President of the Government

, has led a large delegation of companies this week on an official trip to

the first by a Spanish leader, during which he has closed a Forum with leading firms from both countries with the intention of strengthen bilateral ties and open the doors to new chip and semiconductor plants.

Sánchez arrived in Seoul at dawn on Thursday directly from Bali, after participating in the G20 summit.

On the Indonesian island he met with the Prime Minister of Singapore,

after maintaining constant contact with some of his investment funds, such as

, who are always looking for new destinations and opportunities.

The Korean trip, pending for a long time, had a different but equally or more important focus for the challenges of the 21st century.

Spain, like all its partners and rivals, needs chips, many microchips, and the vast majority come from Asia.

At the beginning of the year, the EU launched an initiative with the goal that the continent produces 20% of all microchips in the world by 2030, twice as much as now, which would require us to multiply semiconductor production by four in just eight years. .

"It's a challenge, a challenge, but it's possible,"

a businessman before commissioner and head of the EU's Internal Market, said at the time.

It is estimated that in a decade the world market

and all partners and rivals are making similar plans to guarantee supply.

Today 80% of world production is in Asia, 10% in Europe and the same in the US.

That is why relations with the main suppliers, South Korea, China or Taiwan, are so important, and try to ensure that if plants or

in Europe, be it at home.

"Spain wants to count as a benchmark in chips, we want to be a gateway to Europe and Latin America", he said during his stay Sánchez.

Three of the four largest companies have announced that they will open facilities in Europe to diversify, so that in the event of events such as a pandemic or problems in global supply chains, their customers are not left without supplies.

Moncloa believes that in 2023 Samsung can do the same, and the goal is "to be there when it happens so that they come to Spain."

For this reason, on the same Thursday, a few hours after landing, the Prime Minister visited Samsung's microprocessor manufacturing facility in Pyeongtaek, the world's most advanced microchip plant.

Sánchez was accompanied by the executive director of the device solutions division of Samsung Electronics,

, and the president and general manager of the microchip business division,

.

There, the three-nanometer chips are already manufactured, which reduce energy consumption by almost half and improve performance by more than 20% compared to those of five nanometers.

Tiny and delicate pieces that employees can't even wear makeup, because a blink of an eye could ruin them.

The visit was accompanied by a meeting with the main executives of the company, which was also attended by the still Minister of Industry and Tourism,

.

And it was completed on Friday with a meeting at the highest level with the president of Samsung,

, who attended the closing of the Forum.

"I am impressed by the transformation and cutting-edge capacity of this country. I have presented our strategy and we are going to offer very attractive financing instruments to be key in the global semiconductor value chain. World production must be diversified due to the problems in the supply chain that we have seen this year. Why not Spain be that production and design hub?

They have announced major investments.

Cisco announced a semiconductor design center, the first in the EU, a week ago," the president told Asian businessmen.

Sánchez, who also met with President

, now wants to attract

.

During the meeting, Sánchez highlighted, according to Moncloa, the "ambitious strategy" of the Government

through a wide range of incentives and aid, attractive financing mechanisms, a rapidly growing ecosystem, and the ability to attract talent and highly qualified personnel". In this sense, the president explained to potential investors that our country is going to allocate 12,000 million euros, including 9,000 million public euros, for facilities, through the microelectric and semiconductor Perte, the one that has the most public investment within the Spanish Recovery Plan that aspires to community funds.

Some large companies in the sector have already announced their investment plans in Spain, with new chip design centers.

Just a week ago, Sánchez met (for the third time in a little over a year) with the president of the North American Cisco Systems,

, who will locate a semiconductor center in Barcelona.

This same course, in Davos, Moncloa scheduled meetings with the executives of Intel, Qualcomm, Cisco itself and Micron,

To choose a destination for their plants, which have very specific size and access requirements, the giants look for very demanding conditions.

They ask about the number of engineers in the country, universities, startup ecosystem, research centers.

Moncloa explains in its meetings that the country has a strong and growing ecosystem, in fields such as "integrated photonics, cybersecurity and the design of quantum components, as well as an important network of microelectronics research centers, leading institutes in the field of photonics such as the Institute of Photonic Sciences or the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, which develops future European Chips on RISC-V architecture".

Spain graduates each course to more than 35,000 engineers, but that part of the competition from our neighbors is fierce.

The meeting "went well", they say in the environment of the president.

Samsung does tough tests and has very specific concerns about power capabilities.

They arrived with their homework done and the Government hopes that at the beginning of 2023 a specialized team from the Korean company will come to our country to carry out an on-site evaluation and study the strengths and point to the possible weaknesses of the 'candidacy', since the competition is very strong and there are areas, in France and especially Germany, where a specific ecosystem is being formed.

have joined the trip in Korea

, accompanied by

Together they cover aircraft manufacturing, solutions in specific segments of the transportation, air traffic and defense markets;

design, development and manufacture of automotive components;

design and manufacture of complex Defense systems;

engineering dedicated to the design and installation of wave systems in artificial lagoons;

construction and assembly of elevators, escalators and escalators;

Energy;

logistics in transport services and solutions.

Until now, the Spanish presence is scarce, concentrated in the real estate, retail (Inditex has almost 30 stores) or automobile sectors.

Bilateral trade barely exceeds 4.6 billion a year, although it has increased in recent years, Maroto stressed, in sectors such as renewables.

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