The UK Technology Secretary Peter Kyle has called for support from central government for domestic chip production to ensure Britain’s “resilience and security”.
Speaking to UKTN, Kyle, who was visiting the semiconductor manufacturing hub of Newport, Wales, said the technology is “underpinning the growth of the economy” and the “transition of the government towards a digital future”.
“Therefore, we need domestic production for resilience and security reasons.”
The global semiconductor manufacturing industry is dominated by Taiwan, the US, China and South Korea.
By contrast, the UK accounts for just 0.5% of semiconductor sales, according to government figures, and is in the top 20 nations for importing chips, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity.
The secretary of state for technology was in Wales to champion the efforts of the semiconductor manufacturers Vishay Newport and KLA. There he said the government must be an active partner to be “part of that magic”.
“Too often government stands in the way of this kind of commercialisation, innovation and upscaling we’re seeing here,” Kyle said.
“We need every single scrap of innovation out there to be commercialised to its full potential, creating jobs and wealth for our nation and no more just having this conveyor belt over to California.”
Both Vishay and KLA are owned by American firms, with the latter being based in California.
Kyle said the UK should encourage foreign investment as well as ensuring it has companies “starting, thriving and growing up to be globally dominant from within Britain”.
“You can do the two simultaneously under the last 14 years, too much it was the former.”
In Newport, Kyle also reiterated his call for chip researchers to apply for funding through the Chips Joint Undertaking, a European Union (EU) initiative that the UK joined last year.
The scheme will give researchers access to a funding pool of €1.3bn (£1bn).
“When Britain and its European neighbours work together and collaborate, great things happen,” Kyle said.
“It doesn’t mean that we limit our ambitions to only being continental partners. Of course, we don’t, but it would be a travesty if we were to ignore those partnerships.”
Read more: Britain’s biggest semiconductor companies
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