NXP gives short lease of life to Boeblingen fab

LONDON — NXP Semiconductors will continue to produce some devices at its plant in Boeblingen, Germany until at least March 2008, reversing a decision announced in March this year that all production would cease at the facility by the end of 2007.

The plan called for all equipment and manufacturing being transferred to plants in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, Hamburg, Germany or a TSMC facility in Taiwan.

A source at the Boeblingen site said that since the March 2007 announcement, the load at parts of the facility have doubled, and that it is not all down to making end-of-life products. "Some people believe that NXP has closed the wrong plant", the source said.

NXP has confirmed that, in order to safeguard supply of products to some automotive customers, "we will keep open the line producing ABCD3 chips for a three-month period".

The spokesperson added critical functions and processes will be kept operational "to the extent necessary" during this period.

However, all other operations will be stopped as planned and transferred to other locations by the end of the year. The production line for interface products is being transferred to the ICN8 fab in Nijmegen, which already has a capacity of 500 000 wafer starts a year based on 200mm wafers and makes mixed signal, RF, digital logic RFCMOS and biCMOS devices.

NXP (Eindhoven, the Netherlands) said in March the Boeblingen plant needed to be closed because of "low production load as a result of NXP's withdrawal from two underperforming businesses".

The facility was IBM's first European 200-mm fab and in 1996 became a joint venture between the U.S. group and Philips Semiconductors, but subsequently, became a fully owned unit within Philips Semiconductors.