Freedom! Diodes Inc saves Scottish fab from closure in £50m buyout Though Texas Instruments has finally pulled out of its wafer fabrication plant in Greenock, Scotland, all is not lost for the 300 folk employed there – fellow US firm Diodes Inc has stepped in with a £50m buyout offer. Back in January 2016 TI declared it was going to "phase out our manufacturing facility in Greenock", along …
Only if it's military spec as that is about all the shipyards built back then. ScotGov via the wholly public owned CalMac is trying with new ferry builds but that has run into problems and looks like heading into the courts. Fixed price contract says ScotGov, the spec was changed say the yard, not so says CalMac. The lawyers seem doomed to have to sort it.
But the point is that HMG did feck all to support the yard(s) on the Clyde but ScotGov is trying.
They were power semiconductors. In analogue (or analog) cutting edge line width is not the absolute requirement. These are very low prices given the price for setting up a new fab from a green field site is reckoned to be in the $Bn range.
I worked there as a "Graduate Engineer" [well not quite - did it in the summer holidays etc] in 1986-88 or so when it was National Semiconductor. I worked first on the 4 inch Fabrication line and then later on in the shiny and new 6 inch Fabrication line.
The local ladies who worked on the fabrication lines were great but some of them were rather "down to earth" and liked the idea of fresh meat being thrown to them. Since everyone was wearing clean room gear [bunny suits etc] you learned to recognise people by the shape of their arses.
I lived in Gourock for a while and had some crazy evenings in the pubs there in Summer.
Very fond memories of a great time.
Glad to hear it's been thrown a lifeline.
Glad to hear it's been thrown a lifeline.
Hopefully for those involved it will last.
But I can't help wondering what is so special about this modestly sized facility that DI couldn't have done by enlarging existing facilities, such as the similarly sized Manchester facility?
Indeed just like what remains of our Steel industry was saved by ScotGov buying it then offloading it to Mittal and Tatta. And just like they banged heads together to get that engineering fab in Fife paid by its clients to keep it running, for a while.
Companies not being paid on time, most especially by local and central govt is a major cause of failures, especially of building firms. ScotGov says it is working on it but compliance to the rules seems to be patchy at best. Unfortunately unionist run councils specialise in frustrating ScotGov efforts because SNP Baaaaaaaaaad. It would be funny if it didn't involve people's livelihoods.
Never even worked for them, they bought out another US BlueChip I did work for and who ripped us off.
US tech corporates used to follow the subsidies, and were all moving to Ireland at the start of my career. I remember my first company laid me off after five years, and my pal who worked at this Greenock IBM plant said, "Well, at least you'll have your five months redundancy" - I had four weeks redundancy.
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