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Microchips manufacturer Intel on Friday announced a new investment in Poland worth €4.6 billion to ramp up its capacity in Europe for chip assembly and testing.
The U.S.-based company has selected a site near Wrocław, in southwest Poland, for new factories slated to start running in 2027, Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger said in a statement. The firm announced last year that Poland was among the countries that would benefit from the company’s €33 billion investment plan across the bloc, alongside Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and France.
The Wrocław plant — expected to create 2,000 jobs onsite — will work closely with Intel’s €17 billion state-of-the-art microchips production site in Magdeburg, Germany, which is also scheduled to go live in 2027. Ireland is also a major manufacturing hub for Intel in Europe.
While workers at Intel’s factories in Germany and in Ireland will produce “wafers,” which serve as the base of a microchip, the new Polish plant will cut those wafers into individual chips and assemble and test them before they’re shipped off to customers.
Intel did not disclose how much financial support Polish government authorities are contributing to the project.
The European Commission has yet to give its approval for state aid support for the project.
In Germany, Intel is still in talks with the German government over the level of state aid support. Initially it was seeking €6.8 billion in state aid, but Bloomberg reported this week that the support could go as high as €10 billion.
The investment announced Friday is a political win for European officials, who are seeking to bring the bloc’s market share in the global semiconductor value chain to 20 percent by 2030, compared to 9 percent now.
EU legislators reached a deal on the Chips Act, an industrial policy plan worth €43 billion, last April. Last week, the Commission also approved €8 billion in funding under a cross-border state aid scheme for priority industries, which could lure in €13.7 billion in private investments.
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