Newport (United Kingdom) (AFP)
Wales is more used to making headlines for factory closings than high-tech prowess. Yet in Newport, a former bastion of the coal industry, a handful of semiconductor manufacturers dream of a new Silicon Valley.
"We want to become a technology center like" in California, and attract "the 2030 version of Google or Facebook", explains Chris Meadows, director of systems for companies at IQE, from its white clinic premises where machines are aligned .
IQE is part of a small group of local companies, including SPTS or Newport Wafer Fab, which have teamed up with universities and an innovation center to form a "community" or "cluster", in order to promote their specialty: composite semiconductors.
"We realized that our customers used us at different stages of their supply chain," and that there was more to be gained from collaborating than from competing, says Meadows.
Composite semiconductors are chemical compounds such as silicon carbide or gallium arsenide.
More expensive and complex than silicon electronic chips, they offer superior properties in terms of power, resistance to heat and shock, or light capture, more suitable for electric vehicles, laser devices or 5G telephony.
- "Like cooking" -
In IQE's sterile rooms, machines silently burn discs ("wafers"). Rare technicians in coveralls and masks spend time checking screens.
"This is where the magic happens. It's like cooking: everyone has access to an oven and recipes, but not everyone is a five-star chef. All of our know-how, our lead , comes from our special way of working and assembling these 'wafers'. This is our secret recipe, "says Meadows.
By collaborating, the companies in the "cluster" can offer "tailor-made" products for the microchips that will enter the devices of customers like Philips or Raytheon, and thus keep control of the manufacturing chain.
"Europe and the United States have almost entirely withdrawn from the production" of semiconductors, mainly to China, and "everyone is now trying to get it back," says Meadows.
These jobs, once low-skilled, have transformed, as the sector became automated, into highly-skilled and well-paid positions capable of irrigating the region's economy.
Some 1,400 people work for the cluster, which targets 5,000 employees by 2023, thanks to the growth of a market which last year weighed 77 billion dollars (70 billion euros), dominated by the United States and China, and is expected to grow to $ 300 billion within three years.
The next step for Newport will be to "produce components that go into integrated circuits. This is where a lot of the jobs will come from. We are in talks with two North American companies and a Chinese one, who want to s 'install here to assemble products using our microchips,' says Meadows.
- "Inspire" other sectors -
Within the cluster, manufacturers delegate research and innovation to the university centers of Cardiff or Swansea. As for the prototypes, they are widely supported by government organizations that invest in technologies with high potential, such as gene therapies: the Catapults.
"We have a £ 20 million (£ 23.5 million, Ed) project to create a silicon carbide supply chain for McLaren sports cars," said Andy Sellars, director of strategic development for Catapult. from Newport.
"Some 300 million pounds of investment (352 million euros, editor's note) have been collected in the region to develop the next generation of semiconductors", he adds, from its ultra-design offices which occupy a part of the gigantic IQE building.
The cluster is far from replacing the thousands of jobs lost in recent decades in Wales during a litany of plant closings, such as that of Ford in Bridgend or the RWE coal-fired power station in Aberthaw.
"Will the cluster replace all of these jobs? No," admits Heather Myers, director of the local Chamber of Commerce.
"But it shows a collaborative way of working that can inspire" other sectors, she adds, such as biotechnology, or the renewable energies on which this windswept coastal region counts for its future.
© 2019 AFP