Málaga, July 16, 2024.- The Government of Spain, through the Ministries for Digital Transformation and Public Function and Science, Innovation and Universities; the Junta de Andalucía and the City of Málaga have signed a collaboration agreement that will allow the implementation of an innovation center of chips in wafers of 300 mm of IMEC in the Technological Park of Andalusia.

The signing ceremony took place this afternoon with the assistance of the Minister for Digital Transformation and Public Function, José Luis Escrivá, the president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, and the mayor of Málaga, Francisco de la Torre. The agreement provides that the Government of Spain will provide funding to build the building through the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT) of the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Function. In addition, it will contribute two thirds of the funds needed to equip and start up the White Room of the innovation centre and two thirds of the operating expenses once the centre becomes operational.

The Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities will give impetus to scientific research and technological transformation in the many actions of the project and will generate the transfer of relevant knowledge to it.

For its part, the Junta de Andalucía will provide the floor of the Technological Park of Andalusia, in Málaga, where the center will be built, as well as one third of the funds to equip and start up the White Room and one third of the operating expenses once the center comes into operation.

Finally, the City Council of Malaga is committed to facilitating all the administrative and urban procedures to speed up the construction of the center, as well as to collaborate in the implementation of personnel displaced from other places.

The Minister for Digital Transformation and Public Service, José Luis Escrivá, pointed out that “this project is a clear example of the economic model promoted by the government: cutting-edge technology, alliances with the leading private agents in its sector, collaboration between administrations, connection of productive activities with universities and research centers and generation of poles of attraction of talent”, said Minister Escrivá. “These pioneering facilities will participate in cutting-edge research and chip designs, a critical area for the global economy”

The president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, stressed that “it is a great day for Andalusia and for Spain, for promoting an exciting project with this second world headquarters of IMEC, but also for how we do it, together collaborating the three administrations and the private sector”. According to the Andalusian president, “we set up a powerful ‘technological south’, where all the big corporations want to be because they know that here, in Andalusia, is where the future is thanks to the power and solvency of the Andalusian technological ecosystem with Malaga, Granada and Seville as great epicenters”. “Andalusia wants to lead the vanguard of the transformation process that is already underway,” he said.

The mayor of Malaga, Francisco de la Torre, said that the presence of IMEC in the city will place Malaga at the forefront of the world in semiconductors, will contribute to the creation of an ecosystem of microelectronics and will create hundreds of jobs. De la Torre is grateful that the meetings to make this project a reality, which have been months of contact, have progressed at a good pace to bear fruit with today’s signature. The mayor has set this agreement as an example of how much can be done through public-private partnerships and loyal institutional collaboration. The City Council, added De la Torre, has collaborated with the relevant procedures and contributed a part of the soil, aligning itself with the Government of Spain, the Junta de Andalucía, Málaga TechPark and the Ricardo Valle Institute of Innovation (Innova-IRV), to whom it has thanked for their joint work.

The project will launch the IMEC Foundation’s second 300mm chip innovation centre in the world, researching for new materials beyond silicon, as well as the search for new processes and the development of new equipment for various applications. In addition, it will act as a link between research and industry through a ‘factory lab’, demonstrating functionality and early validation of concept tests on chips in industrial environments such as the automotive industry.

The center is the first that IMEC will install outside of Belgium and will address the entire value chain, including the manufacture of advanced chips on new substrates other than silicon, as well as the development of prototypes for fields such as medicine, photonics and quantum computing. In addition, in connection with this installation, a business ecosystem will be developed that will take advantage of the results of the research, strengthening the microelectronics sector in Spain.

Pearl Chip
The Perte Chip is the largest of the 13 strategic projects promoted by the Government of Spain for the digital and sustainable transformation of the Spanish economy. This Perte, which has a budget of 12 billion euros in financial instruments, is promoting in our country the consolidation of an industrial ecosystem throughout the value chain of semiconductors, with the aim of generating technological sovereignty in Europe and ensuring a digital reindustrialisation with qualified jobs.