Newport Wafer Fab blames UK government over 100 redundancies plan Newport Wafer Fab (NWF), Britain's biggest producer of semiconductor components, has pointed the finger of blame at government restrictions for its decision to chop 100 employees amid uncertainty over future ownership. Back in 2021, the Welsh-headquartered company was sold for £63 million ($79 million) to Dutch chipmaker …
There is not many companies where someone who is specialised in this type of engineering can find employment.
Most likely those people will have to move overseas or find work doing something else.
What is particularly wrong - is not the fact that there is an issue of sale per se, but rather the fact that company like this can't prosper in the UK.
If the company gets sold, I wouldn't be surprised if they had to close anyway after the buyer would have stripped it of its IP and scaled down or closed production.
The UK has become extremely hostile towards SMEs with punitive taxes and regulatory capture.
Given the precarious state of local government funding, is he referring to the city/borough of Newport or just the Wafer Fab?
Although, the size of investment in the wafer fab would have an impact on the local economy and thus on the demands placed on the local authorities budget…
I read an article at the weekend that says if you strip out London, the UK's GDP per head is on a par with Mississippi. .... Headley_Grange
You might like to realise London is a unicorn, both breathing in and spewing out toxic vapourware ..... and going nowhere good really fast and furious.
A fate and destination mirrored right across the West in all of its sad past and presently failing glories ..... which it just loves to deny and declare to one and all would/could only ever be just a temporary glitch able to seek out and destroy their vital universal forces and interdependent sources.
I find it amusing that the government thinks a billion pounds over 10 years represents a meaningful investment in semiconductor manufacturing. Zero makes sense. Give up and avoid waste. 10 billion over a couple of years makes sense. Have a real go at it. 1 billion over 10 years is just money down the drain. 1 billion over 10 years to foster more ARM like companies could make sense, but if manufacturing is your goal it's a bad joke.
I don't think that anyone in the UK government has any real clue about the scale and reach of semiconductor manufacturing. Tiny Newport was continuing to hold its own despite being barely a bacteria on the rump of the global semiconductor industry until the government started taking an interest.
Valve manufacturing was at one time a vital industry, critical to the entire electronics industry (and one which the UK was a major player). The business shrunk as semiconductors took over but there are still plants making the things because there's still a small, but steady, demand for this technology. Its not what anyone would call strategic -- people might be inconvenienced if the supply of KT66 valves dried up but most people wouldn't notice == so it doesn't warrant the attentions of 'the government'. I suspect Newport's in the same boat. They have their niche. They're doing OK. Then they get screwed up because government is now the stomping ground of people who are erudite but really, really, ignorant.
I suspect Newport's in the same boat. They have their niche. They're doing OK. Then they get screwed up because government is now the stomping ground of people who are erudite but really, really, ignorant. ...... martinusher
And whenever ignorant erudition is one of those sub-prime, state actor fields which is defaulted to creating hapless support for bullshit endeavours, is the result a guaranteed enterprise failure ..... an unfortunate indisputable fact that both evidence and history confirm as a GOD's* honest truth?
* ..... Global Operating Devices
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