France acquires chip factory worth almost 6 billion euros

The French-Italian semiconductor manufacturer STMicroelectronics and its American sector partner GlobalFoundries want to build a new chip factory near Grenoble, in southeastern France. It concerns an investment of 5.7 billion euros, it was announced on Monday.

France acquires chip factory worth almost 6 billion euros

The factory, which is to become 'the largest production site for French chips and one of the largest in Europe', will be built on STMicro's existing site in Crolles with financial support from the French state and will create some 1,000 additional jobs. The chips that will be made will be used in the automotive sector, industry and telecom infrastructure, among others.

The announcement comes on the occasion of the fifth 'Choose France' summit. French President Emmanuel Macron will receive 180 foreign business leaders at the Chateau of Versailles on Monday. "This is the largest industrial investment in recent decades, outside the nuclear sector, and it represents an important step in our industrial sovereignty," French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire wrote on Twitter.

The investment is part of the 'Chips Act', the program with which the European Union wants to take a more important position in the global chips market. The European Commission wants to increase the European share in global chip production by 2030 from the current 9 to 20 percent.

Fourteen investment projects will be presented at the 'Choose France' summit, representing a total of €6.7 billion in investments and more than 4,000 new jobs, the presidency has already announced. The American parcel company FedEx, the Vietnamese car manufacturer VinFast, the Dutch employment agency Randstad and the British pharmaceutical company GSK, among others, would announce investments in France.

Since the first 'Choose France' summit in 2018, some 80 investment projects have been announced during those meetings, representing 12 billion euros and 21,000 jobs. Of these, 25 have been implemented, 50 are in progress and 5 have been postponed or cancelled.