A packaging plant worth billions could soon be built in northern Italy. The Veneto region is connected to Magdeburg via the Brenner Railway.
The still incumbent Italian government and Intel are said to be in the final stages of negotiations to build a local packaging plant. The municipality of Vigasio in the northern Italian Veneto region should therefore be awarded the contract.
This is reported by the Reuters news agency, citing insider sources. When the Megafab in Magdeburg was announced, Intel confirmed negotiations about a packaging plant in Italy for a planned 4.5 billion euros. From 2027, semiconductor components will roll off the assembly line in Magdeburg and will be processed further in Italy.
In a packaging plant, silicon chips are married to their carriers. The typical green carriers – so-called substrates – serve as a bridge between the semiconductor component and the circuit board: They provide the contact surfaces with which a notebook manufacturer, for example, can solder a processor to the mainboard. With the spread of chiplet designs, such as processors with several different chips like AMD’s Ryzen 7000 CPUs, packaging technology is becoming increasingly important.
Logistically well located
Intel is planning around 1,500 direct jobs in its Italian plant. An additional 3,500 jobs are to be created by suppliers and partners. The municipality of Vigasio is logistically well located, since the next larger city of Verona is connected to the Brenner railway line, which runs through the Alps to Magdeburg. In addition, there is the Brenner motorway.
Meanwhile, Vigasio is said to have outperformed the Piedmont region, Lombardy, Puglia and Sicily. According to Reuters, however, there could still be hustle and bustle due to the upcoming change of government, since the choice of location is a politically sensitive issue.
