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Europe

Quartz vendor picks Austria

SICO, a global supplier of quartz glass, has chosen the Silicon Alps region of Austria as the site of its new plant. Located in Bad Bleiberg, the 4620-sq-ft facility will manufacture fused silicon products. SICO will spend approximately $3.5 million building the plant. The first three of the facility's 12 smelting ovens will begin producing quartz glass in December 1999. The remaining ovens are scheduled to come on-line in 2000. Bad Bleiberg is in the state of Carinthia bordering Italy in the Austrian Alps. SICO had intended to build the plant in the United States because of lower energy costs. However, the company was persuaded to select Austria after an energy-saving plan was developed using clean air and water from underground mines in Bad Bleiberg. Previously, the quartz products were made only in SICO's smelting plant in Jena, Germany. The Carinthia region is home to a growing high-tech community called the Silicon Alps Initiative.

Scotland launches chip plan

Scotland plans to create the first homegrown semiconductor manufacturing firm as part of an ambitious plan to nearly double the size of the country's semiconductor and microelectronics industry by 2004. Additional plans call for the construction of a wafer foundry and creation of Scotland's first manufacturer of optoelectronic devices. If the initiative is successful, the number of jobs would increase to 14,500. The initiative includes plans to increase the number of university graduates with system-level integration training and to create a larger base of suppliers with headquarters based in Scotland. A clustering concept is at the core of the initiative. According to Scottish Enterprise, a cluster comprises a group of companies and organizations in related industries that buy and sell among one another, using the skills and infrastructure in a local area. Silicon Glen hopes to build on the success of endeavors such as the incubator facility called the Scottish Microelectronics Center and the Microelectronics Imaging and Analysis Center at Edinburgh University.

Asia

NEC, Hitachi seek DRAM pact

Trying to tough it out in the competitive DRAM market, NEC and Hitachi have announced plans to form a joint venture. The partnership will undertake DRAM development and design with the goal of selling DRAMs under a single brand produced by both companies' plants. NEC would like to leverage its high-speed memory technology such as Virtual Channel Memory architecture, which the chipmaker has proposed as an industry standard because of its performance in graphics-intensive applications. The Japanese firms have set a year-end deadline for establishing the development and design joint venture.

In other news, Hitachi Chemical of Tokyo announced that it has signed an agreement to provide sales and technical support for Dow Chemical's SiLK and Cyclotene dielectric resins in Japan. The pact also calls for Hitachi to supply other Dow chemicals for the interlayer dielectric market. Dow Chemical, based in Midland, MI, will place staff at Hitachi facilities as part of the agreement.

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