With an investment of 3.2 billion euros, Italy will host the first European chiplet production plant, creating 1,600 new jobs and relaunching the technology sector and the economy of north-eastern Piedmont.
With the signature at the Mimit, in the presence of the Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy, Adolfo Ursothe establishment in Novara of the multinational Silicon Box plant for the production of chipsets in Italy becomes reality, announced by the company last March and which involves an investment of 3.2 billion euros. “The Silicon Box Investment – added the minister – it is a model case, an international unicum, the first chiplet production plant in Europe, and it will be an industrial partner that will help us grow in the high-tech sector, will allow us to increase our design capabilities and human capital”.
The Novara factory includes an assembly plant with new generation testing and packaging lines which should enter production in 2028, creating approximately 1,600 direct jobs. It will be a sister plant to the Silicon Box factory in Singapore where around 1,200 people work and has required $2.65 billion in investment. The multinational plans to produce chips for artificial intelligence applications, high-speed computing, for large language models, for electric vehicles (EV) and cars but also for smart, mobile and wearable devices and much more.
Obviously the mayor of Novara is very satisfied, Alessandro Canelliwhich speaks of “a great result for our city”. “For 10 months now – added Canelli – we worked to build a candidacy dossier that allowed us to bring this settlement to the city which in fact begins a paradigm shift on the future development of the city of Novara and the north-east of Piedmont with the birth of a hub of science and technology and an innovation district for which new semiconductor production will be central and whose role will include carrying out additional tasks relating to the technological, territorial and economic environment that the new factory will create around it. Mission which will also lead to new opportunities for collaboration with Italian universities and European research bodies. An intervention which envisages, in addition to the establishment of the factory and the technological and scientific park, also an important urban regeneration of abandoned and degraded industrial areas in the urban fabric. Furthermore, the project will have a very significant impact on employment, but also and above all on the economic and training level. Novara was not chosen by chance: the strategic position of our territory was certainly essential in the final decision, but investors saw much more in our city. They saw a thriving productive fabric, a University where students come from all over Europe, they saw the presence of already highly specialized technical schools. Silicon Box will therefore not just be a technology park, but a reality where training will be provided and which will undertake to create an ecosystem of the semiconductor supply chain and which will help our city to launch further redevelopment and regeneration projects”.
The President of the Region Alberto Ciriofor his part, spoke of “a first step to build Silicon Valley in Italy”, and this – he added – “it is done in Piedmont, almost a revenge of that old industrial triangle which today becomes relevant again, thanks to our infrastructures and the fact that we are among the two most important centers in the world in terms of research capacity and technological innovation, the Polytechnic of Milan and the Polytechnic of Turin”.
“Silicon Box’s investment – he concluded – represents an extraordinary result for us, it shows that investing in Piedmont is convenient and confirms the growing attractiveness of our territory that has beaten the competition of regions such as Lombardy and Veneto that for years have been the locomotive of the North to which today Piedmont is fully added thanks to the great work of these years and to the fact that, with Tav and Terzo Valico, which will be completed in the next few years, it is precisely in this territory that the great European routes of mobility and exchange of goods will intersect. We have worked hard on it, we have believed in it, we have invested time, relationships and resources”.
