New plant for microchip boom

The surface of a microchip, magnified many times

A £30m hi-tech factory is to be created by a company in Swansea, with the promise of 100 new job.

Pure Wafer Ltd will create more than a hundred jobs at the Swansea Vale Business Park, using state-of-the-art technology to recycle microchip test components.

Pure Wafer is a new company started recently by a group of executives with extensive experience in the microchip industry.

Reclaimed chips: Pure Wafer will re-use components

The manufacturing of microchips involves the production of a large number of "test" components which until now have gone to waste.

Pure Wafer will reclaim these for alternative uses - so it is also regarded as an environmentally-beneficial industry.

The Swansea plant is believed to be the most advanced of its kind in Europe.

Financial assistance for the project has been provided by the National Assembly for Wales.

First Minister Rhodri Morgan is due to perform a topping out ceremony on Wednesday at the site just north of the city.

'Mothballed'

Microchips appear in almost every type of domestic and work device and last year saw a shortage of chips for mobile phones and children's toys.

Hyundai announced last year that it might consider opening its giant "mothballed" plant at Newport.

The South Korean company took over the former LG plant after a financial recession in south east Asia.

Some analysts doubt whether it will ever employ the 1,200 workers that LG Semicon had promised.

If any project at Newport went ahead now, it still would not come into production until 2001 or 2002, by which time the current chip boom may have levelled out.