A score of chip companies are interested in investing up to 1.6 billion in Catalonia

The semiconductor industry, a material that allows controlling electrical currents and is made up of transistors and chips, is in a development phase in Catalonia. This is demonstrated by the trickle of new investments, such as those of Lenovo, Intel and Cisco in the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), MPS in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat and, the most recent, Idiaded in Viladecans.

These will not be the only projects to be announced, considering that the Generalitat, through Acció, is working with a portfolio of 22 potential foreign investment projects in semiconductors. If all of them materialize, it will mean attracting an investment of more than 1,600 million euros and the creation of 1,800 jobs in the next two to three years.

Most of the projects interested in investing in Catalonia are concentrated in the first phase of chip manufacturing, design, as has happened with multinationals Lenovo, Intel, Cisco and MPS. According to Acció, this focus on design is understood by factors such as the high level of Catalan industrialization and the presence of leading research centers related to chip development such as the BSC and the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), as well as universities that offer training in semiconductors. Innovation centers that companies like Cisco already have in Barcelona also help to expand investments and continue positioning the Catalan capital.

The dynamism that this industry is registering is accompanied by the lack of semiconductors that began with the pandemic and that still affects the economy. It is mainly affecting sectors such as automotive, but also food, pharmaceutical and chemical products or textiles, considering that they use machines that need chips.

This blockade has been responded to with a European will to recover technological sovereignty, with initiatives such as the European Chips Act, which aims to increase European production to 20% by 2030 ---currently 8%--- with an investment of 43,000 million euros, and the Perte of semiconductors, the best endowed, with an investment of 12,250 million euros.

An ecosystem that invoices 160 million

Awaiting new investments, the sector is made up of more than 100 agents in Catalonia, with 86 companies and 18 research entities, and 4,400 professionals. The turnover of the companies stands at 160 million euros, divided between 66% that invoice more than one million euros and 37% that earn more than 10 million euros. 81% are SMEs and 8% are startups. Almost 75% are more than 10 years old.

If the entire value chain is analyzed, almost 40% of the companies are dedicated to chip design and the rest are distributed among electronic circuits, auxiliary companies and those focused on distribution and materials. The semiconductor industry is characterized by high fragmentation, making them pass through multiple companies and countries. In fact, it is estimated that a chip travels more than 40,000 kilometers and crosses 70 borders from its inception to its integration into the final product.