TSMC’s first European chip contract manufacturing facility will be located in Dresden and will be operated jointly with three European companies that will simultaneously serve as its customers. TSMC plans to build other facilities in Europe, according to a senior Taiwanese official.
Image Source: TSMC
These statements were made on Bloomberg TV by Wu Cheng-wen, who heads the National Science and Technology Committee in Taiwan. He literally said the following: “They have started to build the first plant in Dresden, they already have plans to build several new factories in the future that could serve different sectors of the market.” Let us recall that the first TSMC enterprise in Europe will be content with mature lithography, specializing primarily in the needs of the automotive segment. The construction costs of the first plant, amounting to 10 billion euros, will be approximately half covered by government subsidies. This enterprise will begin producing products by the end of 2027.
The Taiwanese official did not specify when new TSMC enterprises might appear in Europe, and company representatives in comments to Bloomberg stated that it has no new investment plans at the moment. According to the Taiwanese minister, now the most important segment for market participants is the segment of components for artificial intelligence systems, but even if we are not talking about the production of chips for Nvidia and AMD accelerators, other companies will be ready to use TSMC’s services in this area. “They could operate in the European market, and TSMC can build on these expectations when planning the construction of its next plants,” Wu Cheng Wen suggested. He added that TSMC has yet to decide whether it will build its facilities in Dresden or other parts of the EU.
Other Taiwanese manufacturers have already benefited from TSMC’s decision to build its first plant in Germany. The company’s suppliers are ready to develop their presence in the neighboring Czech Republic, and the latter’s authorities are deepening cooperation with Taiwan against this background, including in the field of scientific research. In the short term, the Taiwanese official added, the implementation of projects to build factories of Taiwanese companies in the United States may be difficult for them due to high costs, but in the long term it will benefit them.