Tata’s semiconductor plant in Assam to be operational next year

Tata Group on Saturday conducted the ground-breaking ceremony for its Rs27,000-crore semiconductor factory in Assam, marking the commencement of construction of the facility.

Speaking at the ceremony, Tata Group chairman N Chandrasekaran said the semiconductor plant being set up by group company, Tata Electronics, at Jagiroad in Morigaon district of Assam, will be operational next year. 

The facility is coming up at the site of the defunct Nagaon Paper Mill, a unit of the Hindustan Paper Corporation Ltd.

Once operational, the facility will provide employment to 15,000 people directly and up to 13,000 people indirectly, according to minister for railways, electronics and IT and I&B, Ashwini Vaishnaw.

He said the project will have forward and backward linkages, which will lead to the creation of new ancillary and beneficiary units coming up within and outside the state.

The plant will have a capacity to produce 48 million semiconductor chips per day. The facility will also support innovation in packaging of semiconductor chips, including development of advanced indigenous semiconductor packaging technologies such as Wire Bond, flip chip, and I-SIP, the minister stated.

These technologies, the minister said, are extremely critical for the manufacture of electric vehicles and have wide applications in communications, network infrastructure, etc.

Simultaneously, the necessary manpower is being readied with about 85,000 engineering and technical personnel with B.Tech, M.Tech and PhD degree holders trained in semiconductor chip design at 113 academic institutions across the country, including the Northeast, the minister added.

Semiconductors are a critical part of the value chain serving the growing global demands across key segments like AI,  automotive, telecom, and consumer electronics. Including mobile phones.