The global game of microelectronics and chips represents a fundamental challenge for the international industry and for the competitive positioning of the major powers.
Confapi Brescia on the topic of microelectronics
«Italy can play its cards in a challenge in which all the determinants of a paradigm shift which is significantly influencing the frontier industry come together. Firstly, the overlap between economic-industrial issues and geopolitical dynamics”, he declares Andrea Muratoreanalyst at Confapi Brescia.
From this perspective, the analyst recalls that:
«The Western camp led by the US is implementing decoupling policies from the Chinese giant, uniting countries with a common vision of identity, values and politics in strategic supply chains». Furthermore, adds Muratore, «semiconductors are the unit of measurement of a system’s ability to compete in the most advanced technological revolutions. Starting from that of artificial intelligence, around which the industrial engineering strategies revolve” with which the USA wants to attract investments in new plants: “the Taiwanese giant TSMC will bet 65 billion dollars for a 2 and 3 nanometer chip plant set to come online in 2027 with Chips and Science Act subsidies covering one-sixth of spending and to be based in Arizona; Micron will inaugurate a large plant in 2028 in Idaho and South Korea’s Samsung will invest 20 billion dollars in a new factory in Texas.”
Faced with this amount of investment, Muratore recalls that:
«Europe hasn’t held back either. And the sector’s prospects also closely concern our country and the industrial system of Northern Italy, of which Lombardy and Brescia are a keystone. The European Union has undertaken with the Community Chips Act to create the conditions to increase the market share of the Old Continent in this sector from 10 to 20% by 2030. In this regard, France has taken a long lead together with Germany in subsidizing new plants: Paris supports the expansion of the StMicroelectronics site in Grenoble-Crolles, while Berlin instead supports the maxi-investment of the American Intel for a 30 billion euro plant in Magdeburg, in Saxony-Anhalt”.
It’s Italy? In December 2023, Muratore explains:
«The Meloni government has put 3.3 billion euros on the table to support the semiconductor industry between now and 2030. Which, we remember, is a strategic enabler for many crucial supply chains for national manufacturing: automotive, especially in a context of electric transition, precision machinery, increasingly integrated with the internet of things, mechatronics and electrical engineering. Italy is building its own systemic “Chip Valley” in a triangle around Milan which has two vertices: Agrate Brianza, home to the Italian sites of StMicroelectronics, which produces wafers and chips functional to various industrial sectors, and Cernusco Lombardone, where it operates Technoprobe, the global leader in chip verification cards (probe cards) are already operational. Novara could be added to them, where Silicon Box, a Singaporean company that has announced 3.2 billion euros of investments to produce chiplets, portions of processors that integrate into more complex chips, is set to settle.”
European supply chains
This liveliness adds to the emergence of the theme of building European supply chains through the «structuring of the Alliance of European Regions for Semiconductors (Esra) chaired by Lower Saxony and with Piedmont as the vice-presidency territory. Semiconductors are also central in the North-West economic cabin which integrates the Economic Development Departments of Piedmont, Lombardy and Liguria as allies”. The bottlenecks to be overcome are above all those of the «training of adequate personnel, which is particularly important today», notes Muratore.
A theme on which:
«The alliance between institutions and territories can help make up for it. And Brescia, having a thriving university and industrial base, can be a laboratory territory. The theme of cooperation and knowledge sharing appears crucial to allow our country’s system to climb positions in a competitive and complex supply chain, but with guaranteed returns. In terms of economic prosperity and, at the same time, industrial and supply chain security.”
Tags: Confapi Brescia microelectronics sector Italy play cards
