The world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, GlobalFoundries, has opened a $4bn (£3.2bn) semiconductor fabrication plant in its existing Singapore campus as part of a major global manufacturing expansion.

The facility is 23,000 square metres (248,000 square feet) and expected to create 1,000 jobs, of which 95 per cent will comprise equipment technicians, process technicians and engineers, the company said.

“If we run [the Singapore campus’s] capacity to the fullest, that will probably be [around] 45 per cent of revenue for GlobalFoundries,” said the company's Singapore general manager, Tan Yew Kong.

The company’s Singapore operations, which serve 200 clients worldwide, also include two fabs that produce 720,000 300mm wafers and 692,000 200mm wafers a year respectively. With this large investment, GlobalFoundries demonstrated its belief in an increase in demand for chips in the second half of 2024.

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