SILER CITY, N.C. — Dignitaries, boardroom employees and workers from one of the world’s top semiconductor manufacturers revealed progress on a second manufacturing location in Siler City on Tuesday.
Wolfspeed, a North Carolina company, appears to be on track to finish a manufacturing facility hardly nine months after breaking ground. Before a tent full of people CEO Gregg Lowe remarked on how far they’ve come since the first steel beam was laid in June.
“Look where we are today. It’s an amazing transformation in such a short amount of time,” Lowe said.
The already large two-million-square-foot facility has crews of more than 2,000 workers toiling away seven days a week to meet construction expectations.
More than 18 months after Gov. Roy Cooper announced a megasite in Chatham County, the company gave media members a tour of its future “spine” of operations.
Workers raised a beam to signify the future home of Wolfspeed’s second production plant in a ceremonial gesture. Senior Vice President of Global Expansion Tom Agron said a final beam symbolizes the completion of the building process and the start of a new chapter in which the facility is actually brought to life.
“It is a place to top the new building to secure good fortune for the structure and its inhabitants,” Agron said.
The physical milestone represents a company-wide goal of meeting global demand. Chief Technical Officer Elif Balkas said as supply continues to dwindle that goal is as important as ever.
“Very powerful that we can address the growing market when it comes to electric vehicles, energy efficiency,” Balkas said.
Sen. Thom Tillis, one of two senatorial Republicans representing North Carolina, said the real celebration will be when paychecks start being drawn.
“It’s not the end run. The end run is when I see employees walking through this building,” Tillis said.
Silicon carbide is described by employees as a hard chemical compound usable as a semiconductor with broad appeal to the electric vehicle, energy storage and artificial intelligence industries.
No recordings were allowed during the tour of the mammoth structure. The top of the “spine” of the facility towers over the work below like a skyscraper over residents in a major city.
Wall to wall, the space is so wide that there is enough space for machinery, manpower and automated equipment.
The factory is being named the John Palmour Manufacturing Center in honor of one of the company's late co-founders.
Raw materials are forged into 200 millimeter silicon carbide wafers to fit into semiconductor chips.
Two grow farms for crystals will be housed in order to mass produce silicon carbide, heating the elements to half the temperature of the surface of the sun.
Senior Vice President of Global Materials operations Adam Milton said the eventual output will be incredible, even though the process remains secretive to protect intellectual property rights.
“It’s really a huge milestone and huge leap forward for Wolfspeed,” Milton said.
The advancements in semiconductor manufacturing are not lost on Co-Founder Dr. John Edmond. Edmond came up with idea to use silicon carbide as a student at N.C. State. Spectrum News 1 interviewed the co-founder before President Biden’s trip to the RTP headquarters as the first leg of the Investing in America tour.
“When we graduated you know what, it’s got a lot of properties that are going to be important in the future. If we can take this material and make it an industry out of it, and a company out of it, it might work. This is proof behind us,” Edmond said.
Top company leaders project the “JP” to be complete by the end of the year while still believing they are on track to become fully operational by 2025.
The company projects the completion of the facility will bring 1,800 well-paying jobs to the area by 2030.