Pragmatic Semiconductor has opened a major manufacturing facility in Durham as nations scramble to secure chip supply chains.
Pragmatic Park, a 60,000-sqm facility in the North East, opened on Wednesday in a ceremony featuring key customers, ecosystem partners, investors, government officials and British royalty.
The company said the factory would provide 500 new high-skilled jobs in the region over the next five years.
There are a lot of expectations for the Cambridge-headquartered chip manufacturer, which is attempting to position itself as the gold standard for the British semiconductor industry.
With semiconductors named by the government as a critical technology for the UK, Pragmatic’s decision to open what it claims will be the country’s largest chip manufacturing facility by next year in the North of England is a significant statement amid fierce international competition.
Arm, also based in Cambridge, opted – through its Japanese owner SoftBank – to list publicly in New York and deepen ties with US industry titans such as Nvidia, Amazon and Intel.
Newport Wafer Fab, the operator of what is currently the UK’s largest chip plant, has been acquired by America’s Vishay – after a National Securities Act decision blocked a merger with Chinese-owned Nexperia.
Pragmatic itself has toyed with the idea of moving manufacturing to the US, particularly before the launch of the UK semiconductor strategy, when President Biden’s Chips Act seemed the best chance for the company to secure state backing.
Global chip race
Semiconductor manufacturing has become inescapably linked with geopolitics, as nations across North America, Europe and Asia scramble to secure their places in the global supply chain of a technology that has become essential to almost every aspect of modern life.
Given the tech sub-sector is so intertwined with issues of national security and global rivalries, Pragmatic, accompanied by an opening ceremony attended by Princess Anne, seems to have demonstrated its commitment to Britain.
“We’re very proud of our base here in the Northeast of England, our facility in Cambridge and our commitment to the UK to bring more high-value manufacturing jobs,” Pragmatic’s chief technology officer and co-founder Richard Price told UKTN.
Price has often spoken about the UK needing to be realistic about its place in the global semiconductor industry, encouraging the nation to “play to its strengths” rather than competing in the advanced semiconductor market where other nations like Taiwan have a strong foothold.
The UK might not be able to offer as much money to the industry as the US – which earmarked over £40bn more than the UK for the technology in its strategy, but Price said that doesn’t mean the UK can’t lead in its own way.
“There’s a danger that you can spread things too thinly, of course,” Price noted.
The Pragmatic CTO said it was still too early to know if the semiconductor strategy would pan out as intended, but he encouraged “focused, targeted investment and support” to support “highly efficient” manufacturing.
Efficiency is very much something the Pragmatic team has emphasised. Touring the facilities at the newly opened Pragmatic Park, UKTN was told the processes being used are all about quickly and cheaply producing chips at a considerably lower energy and environmental cost.
The industry generally uses silicon to produce chips, however, at Pragmatic Park, glass is used to imprint the chip design onto plastic film. This process, according to the company, means the material is reusable, whereas silicon can only be used once each time.
The new site will produce 300mm semiconductor wafers, which Pragmatic claims are the first UK production site for this specification, and will have the capacity to produce billions of its flexible chips each year.
“We all have to recognise that some of the best talent in the world, both from a research perspective, but also from a manufacturing perspective comes from the UK,” Niranjan Sirdeshpande, global head of investment at M&G’s Catalyst Fund, which last year co-led a £182m investment into Pragmatic, told UKTN.
Sirdeshpande, who is also a non-executive director at Pragmatic, said if the UK can “give that talent pool an opportunity to work in cutting-edge industries”, then it’s a “win-win for everyone”.
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