The Micron Technology plant in Sanand, set to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday, is expected to put India commercially on the global semiconductor map.
At full capacity, the output at the Sanand unit of the Boise (Idaho)-headquartered memory solutions giant is estimated to account for 10 per cent of its worldwide production. It will cater to markets in India and abroad.
The $37.4 billion company has facilities in the United States (US), China, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Japan, among others, with 13 major manufacturing sites. India will now join this group.
Confirming the development, a top official in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said: “The area of the ATMP (assembly, test, marking and packaging) plant at its peak will be equal to the combined size of six to seven cricket fields and will be able to meet the growing demand for memory chips in the country India and also for exports.”
Officials say the move is significant because it comes at a time when Micron has been reducing its dependence on China and shifting investment to India and the US. Homegrown Chinese companies in the memory space, like YMTC, have been gaining market share in their country, supported by government policy focused on enhancing its local supply chain.
The move started in 2023, when the Chinese government prohibited Micron products from being used in critical information infrastructure for reasons of national security.
As part of the Indian government’s $10 billion semiconductor scheme, the government has offered applicants 50 per cent of the cost of building an ATMP or OSAT (outsourced semiconductor assembly and test) plant as incentive, and Micron was its first beneficiary, building its plant at an investment of ₹22,516 crore.
The plant can do assembly and testing for dynamic random access memory, NAND (a type of flash memory used in storage devices). It will manufacture solid-state storage devices.
At its peak the plant is expected to give 5,000 direct jobs.
To begin with, wafers will be imported from its plants in other plants, will go through assembling and testing in India, and then packaged after being converted into finished memory products. Then they will be exported and also sold for its clients in the country.
Micron has shifted some of its machines from Penang, Malaysia, to India to kick off the setting up of the plant.
When the project was being planned, executives in Micron had said that at the heart of the plant would be the clean room, which would be 1 million square feet, among the largest for an ATMP plant. It has to be free of dust (the requirement being 1,000 small particles per square metre, a tenth of the norm for an operating theatre).
It is also expected to be one of the most automated ATMP plants in the world and will offer value addition in the product, which could range from 10-40 per cent.
The commissioning of the plant is expected to be followed by three more ATMP/OSAT plants, many of which are doing pilot production, trying up buyback arrangements, and even preparing for the next stage of expansion. This will happen by December. These include Kaynes Technology and CG Power, which are also located in Sanand, and one by the Tata group in Assam.
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