Report to highlight $3.6 billion expansion of Samsung Austin Semiconductor
AUSTIN, Texas–The old adage of everything being bigger in Texas is often true, and the boastful economic figures reported by the Austin Chamber of Commerce are making a solid impression that the capital of the Lone Star State looms large over a nation plagued by a stagnant economy.
The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric plans to recognize the burgeoning economy of Central Texas through an in-depth interview with Dave Porter, the Chamber’s senior vice president of economic development, at 5:30 p.m. today. The report is expected to also focus on the $3.6 billion expansion of Samsung Austin Semicondutor and can be seen on Austin-based CBS affiliate KEYE.
“CBS is on the bandwagon of news organizations that have recently taken notice of the awards and accolades that Austin has earned,” said Tony Schum, director of economic development for the Austin Chamber of Commerce. “Economic opportunity has waned at times but come back full-force and multiplied in certain cases where industry is still growing in tech, biotech, clean energy, creative media and certainly wireless.”
The list of accolades is long, with Austin cited as various forms of “recession-proof” by The Milken Institute, Wired, Forbes, Fortune and others. According to the personal finance and business advice publication, Kiplinger, Austin ranks first for its“Number One Cities for the Next Decade.”
As a corollary to Austin’s economic success, the lively market is a mecca of sorts for tech-based industries, including chip-maker Samsung Electronics Co., Asia’s largest producer of semiconductors. The company, which first opened a plant in north Austin in 1997, built a second one in 2007 and announced in May 2010 that an additional $3.6 billion would be invested for the most recent expansion of its 12-inch semiconductor fabrication plant. This brings the total invested by Samsung in its Austin plant to more than $9 billion. According to the company, which is based in Suwon, South Korea, this makes it by far the largest foreign investment in Texas and one of the largest single foreign investments in the United States.
The new unit should be in full operation by late 2011, and likely will add approximately 500 jobs to the plant, growing the Austin site to about 1,500 employees, many of them engineers and technicians. Samsung also plans to hire 3,000 construction workers and equipment vendors until the project is complete.
The major investment will be used to manufacture large scale integration chips, or LSI chips, in a move that more than doubled spending to about $8.7 billion on Samsung’s international semiconductor business for 2010 and is designed to meet demand for chip use in smart phones, cameras and appliances. LSI is the process of placing a large number of circuits on a small chip, and is currently in high-demand to produce advanced logic devices. Currently, the plant produces NAND Flash memory chips with production slated to continue.
Samsung Austin Semiconductor is the company’s only semiconductor manufacturing plant located outside of South Korea.
