Asia Times (July 9) quoting the Guardian said that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had ordered a review of the recent takeover of Newport Wafer Fab, the UK’s largest producer of semiconductors, byNexperia, a Dutch-based firm wholly owned by China’s Wingtech. It said although Nexperia has not revealed the sum paid or how the deal was constructed, reports state it was for US$87m (£63m). This follows a US$700m investment by Nexperia in its fabs in Manchester, UK and Hamburg, Germany, to boost capacity. The report said Newport Wafer Fab is capable of making power and compound semiconductor ICs on 200mm-diameter wafers and has a capacity of 35,000 wafers a month. The fab was built for Inmos in 1982 to build the transputer and has since been owned by STMicroelectronics, International Rectifier and Infineon before becoming NWF in 2017.
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