Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner responsible for the internal market, could not not be part of the party. Considered the father of the Chips Act – a European plan aimed at putting the Old Continent back on the map of semiconductor producers – he was to be, on Thursday September 28, the distinguished guest of Soitec, one of the main players French company in the sector, for the inauguration of its fourth factory on the Bernin site (Isère), not far from Grenoble.
Created in 1992, and very close to filing for bankruptcy three years later, Soitec has since become a key player in the chip market. “There is a bit of Soitec in all the smartphones in circulation in the world”his former boss, Paul Boudre, liked to say before leaving the company in 2022.
Strictly speaking, Soitec does not produce semiconductors, but wafers (wafers) on which the latter are melted. Its products are particularly popular in telephony for radio frequency modules such as 5G chips. But not only.
From its new factory a new category of wafers (SmartSiC) designed in particular to meet the needs of electric car manufacturers, with the promise of longer battery life and faster charging. The factory, with an area of 2,500 square meters, should be able to produce 500,000 parts per year by 2028.
An important step
Soitec had announced its choice to set up its site in Isère in 2022, after having hesitated to build it in Singapore, where it is already present. However, the State and the region convinced him to strengthen the French Silicon Valley, where the Franco-Italian STMicroelectronics and the American GlobalFoundries will soon establish a joint factory. This is also where the CEA-Leti laboratories are located, with which Soitec works to develop its products.
The investment for the new Soitec site amounts to 380 million euros – 30% covered by French and European aid – and could create four hundred jobs when the factory is at full capacity. This did not prevent the company from continuing to invest in Asia, where it announced, at the end of 2022, the launch of a new production line to double its local capacities.
For Soitec, the inauguration of its new factory in Isère constitutes an important step. Even if, on June 7, it announced for the first time an annual figure exceeding 1 billion euros (1.1 billion), its results for the first quarter of the 2023-2024 financial year show a decline. by almost 25%. This is due in particular to the sharp slowdown in the smartphone market and the stocks that its customers in this sector still have to sell.
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