Plessey Semiconductors, one of the most renowned names in the UK’s semiconductor history, has been relaunched as a chip business operating from the original Plessey CMOS fab at Roborough in Plymouth.
Plessey Semiconductors has been created out of Plus Semi, a company set up to acquire the manufacturing facilities of two former Plessey fabs in Swindon and Roborough.
“The historical significance of what we are doing is not lost on the management and employees of our new business,” said Michael LeGoff, managing director of Plessey Semiconductors.
The Roborough plant was acquired from former owner X-FAB Silicon Foundries in December.
As a result of that deal, Plus Semi has taken the old Plessey name and has started moving its linear and bipolar production lines from the Swindon facility to Plymouth.
When this is completed later this year, the Swindon facility will close.
See: Nick Flaherty's blog - The return of Plessey
Initially a foundry business, supporting the former customers of X-FAB, the new company has plans to design and manufacture its own bipolar and CMOS chips.
According to Paul James, commercial director of Plessey Semiconductors, the company has identified a market for its high performance analogue technology.
“We have been receiving very positive responses from the market about our plans to support both our existing foundry customers and to engage new customers with exciting new product releases,” said James.
“The first of these product families is on schedule for release later in 2010,” said James.
The Roborough facility is currently operated as a foundry service producing eight-inch wafers on 0.35-micron CMOS process technologies.
The facility, which will employ 175 staff, has a capacity of 30,000 8-inch wafers a year.
The new company is now transferring three bipolar lines on both silicon and silicon-on-insulator substrates into the Roborough facility.
The new company includes a number of employees who started their careers in Plessey working in various sites around the UK.
“We see this announcement as a return to our roots. This is a business model that addresses a market that we know very well – designing and manufacturing a set of high technology semiconductor products that competes with any semiconductor company in the world,” said LeGoff.