NEW ALBANY, Ohio - President Joe Biden joined Ohio dignitaries and Intel executives in suburban Columbus on Friday to celebrate the groundbreaking of a $20 billion silicon chip factory and to tout the high-paying tech jobs that will be needed to staff the plant and suppliers throughout the state.
“Our children and grandchildren will never have to look beyond Ohio for great job opportunities,” Lt. Gov. Jon Husted said, surrounded by large construction equipment at the future site of a plant Intel expects to employ thousands of workers when it begins production in 2025.
The Friday groundbreaking was the culmination of efforts across all levels of government and private industry to bring Intel’s facility to New Albany, an area just outside Columbus. The company is receiving billions of dollars in incentives to locate the plant in Ohio and will benefit from federal legislation passed this summer to entice companies to build chip plants in the U.S.
Intel will manufacture silicon wafers at the plant, and those wafers will be cut into tiny chips. Once produced in Ohio, they will be shipped across the world and packaged inside central processing units.
After that, Intel will sell the packages to companies that make personal computers, servers, mobile devices and other technology. In the future, the chips will be used in autonomous vehicles and other state-of-the-art equipment.
Making another return trip to the Buckeye State, Biden toured parts of the 1,000-acre site during his Friday visit and met with union building trades workers who are working on construction. About 20 supporters of former President Donald Trump with signs and flags that said, “Let’s go, Brandon,” and “Trump won,” lined the outside of the groundbreaking ceremony. A small separate group was composed of people with Proud Boys signs, according to AFP, the French Press Agency, which traveled with Biden to Columbus late Friday morning.
“Here’s the deal: America invented this chip, America invented it,” Biden said. “They powered NASA’s moon mission. Federal investment helped bring down the cost of making these chips, creating a market and an entire industry. As a result, over 30 years ago, America had more than 30% of the global chip production. Then something happened: American manufacturing — the backbone, the backbone of our economy — got hollowed out. Companies moved jobs overseas, especially from the industrial Midwest.”
During the pandemic, when foreign factories shut down, America’s economy was affected. In fact, the semiconductor shortage is one of the reasons vehicles got expensive, he said.
“The future of the chip industry is going to be made in America,” Biden said.
U.S. Sen. Rob Portman of Cincinnati said the Ohio plant will help narrow a “competitiveness gap that’s grown dangerously wide” between the U.S. and other countries that manufacture silicon chips. Ninety percent of chips are manufactured overseas, said U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Cleveland Democrat.
The state snagged Intel, which was looking for a domestic manufacturing site, with about $2 billion in incentives. The New Albany site was chosen over 39 other locations on Intel’s shortlist. While construction on the factory will cost around $20 billion, future phases could expand the project to a $100 billion investment.
In addition to the state benefits, the CHIPS Act, recently passed by Congress and signed by Biden, will provide $52 billion in grants and other incentives, as well as a 25% tax credit, to semiconductor companies that invest in chip plants in the U.S. In June, after months of inaction in Washington on the CHIPS Act, Intel announced it was delaying the Ohio groundbreaking. It wanted to know for certain that the federal funding was coming. The groundbreaking was initially scheduled for July 22.
Around 3,000 full-time workers paying on average $135,000 a year and 7,000 temporary construction workers will be employed in the first phase of the plant. Intel also will spend $50 million over the next 10 years in Ohio at universities and community colleges to develop a workforce to work in high tech.
Intel has said production could begin at the plant in 2025.
“The rustbelt is dead,” Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said. “The ‘silicon heartland’ begins.”