Bosch unveils plans to pump £209m into chipmaking sites
Technology giant Bosch has announced plans to inject an additional 250 million euros (£209m) into chip production facilities at its Reutlingen plant in Germany, as the global race to secure chimpaking capacity heats up.
The Reutlingen site had previously been earmarked by Bosch for 50 million euros of a total of 400 million pot that had been set aside last year for spending on chip production this year across Reutlingen, Dresden and a testing facility in Penang, Malaysia.
Bosch’s Dresden facility is likely to receive the lion’s share of the funding, with plans to expand the 1-billion-euro factory which produces 300-millimeter wafer chips.
The extra capacity at Reutlingen will come into force in 2025, Bosch said in a statement.
The plans come amid a global shortage of chips and a flurry of major investment into manufacturing facilities.
US technology giant Intel announced in January it would invest more than $20bn in two new chip factories in Ohio, and last week snapped up Israeli chipmaker Tower for $5.4bn.
British politicians have launched a charm offensive to tempt chipmaker Arm into listing in London, in a sign of the strategic importance of chip manufacturing amid the shortage.
Anthony Browne, the Conservative MP for Cambridge South, where Arm is based told City A.M that it was vital that the firm was listed in London.
He told City A.M.: “Ownership matters, particularly when it comes to such a strategically important company and major employer, and as a nation we have historically been far too casual about such offerings.”