Portugal comes clean
02/01/2001
PORTO REGION, PORTUGAL — If you plan it, will they come? ICEP-Portugal, the Portuguese government investment agency, hopes the answer is yes. Charged with attracting industry and investment, ICEP recently commissioned a study of three cleanroom sites in the Porto region of Portugal, some 300 kilometers (190 miles) north of Lisbon.
Conducted by Jenoptik AG subsidiary M+W Zander (Stuttgart, Germany) and Angelou Economic Advisors Inc. (Austin, TX), the study evaluated sites for a specific kind of cleanroom.
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"This was confined to semiconductor efforts," says Wolfgang Riedel, project manager for industrial engineering at M + W Zander.
The evaluation confirmed that all three sites offered at least 125 acres of space, a minimum wastewater capacity of a million gallons a day, favorable placement with respect to overhead power lines, and the right type of soil and bedrock. The study also looked at local government incentives and the availability of a technically trained work force.
Malcolm Penn, chairman of UK-based semiconductor market research firm Future Horizons, cites nearby technical institutes and universities, as well as existence of a local state-of-the-art test and assembly operation as indications that the basic technical work force for a chip plant is in place.
Future Horizons has worked with ICEP in the past, and Penn characterizes the recently completed site studies as the most advanced he's ever seen in Europe. That's not surprising, because the goal was to do 90 percent of the work that goes into a site evaluation.
With the basic infrastructure in terms of utilities and work force in place, the question then becomes one of business justification. According to Cahners In-Stat Group (Scottsdale, AZ), Europe's semiconductor market will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 11.5 percent through 2003. Three of the top 11 chip makers in the world are based in Europe, and European design houses account for half of the world's high-level design revenue. But little of this semiconductor activity goes on in the Iberian peninsula.
"Spain and Portugal are definitely minor players," observes Grant Johnson, semiconductor industry analyst at In-Stat.
As for efforts to bring a wafer fab to Portugal, Johnson says that the industry is drifting toward what he calls a "ChipWreck," with a surplus of capacity. The industry is taking heed, and several fab construction projects have recently been scaled back.
However, for Portugal, all is not yet lost. According to Gary Matthews, managing director for DAW Technologies Europe Limited (West Lothian, Scotland), there are some signs of increased cleanroom activity and interest in Portugal.
He says, "Recently we've been asked to look at a semiconductor-related project in Portugal. In fact, I was there two weeks ago. This is probably our first inquiry we've ever received from Portugal."