With uncommon quickness, Durham chipmaker Wolfspeed hits milestone at Siler City plant
Nine months after beginning construction near Siler City, the Durham semiconductor chipmaker Wolfspeed celebrated a milestone Tuesday at its future $5 billion plant in western Chatham County.
U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis joined Wolfspeed executives for a “topping out” ceremony, a builder tradition symbolizing when the final structural beam is placed.
Nicknamed “the JP” after the company’s late cofounder John Palmour, the factory is expected to eventually employ around 1,800 workers, roughly 150 of whom Wolfspeed says it has already hired. The company expects to open the JP later this year.
Erecting a facility of this size (it covers more than 1 million square feet.) within a year was unusually quick, both the company and Tillis acknowledged.
“I asked them during the tour, ‘How was the permitting process?’ because this just doesn’t come up,” Tillis told The News & Observer in an interview after the event. “They were saying great things about state government and really facilitating the process.”
Whiting-Turner was the construction contractor on the project, and its CEO, Tim Regan, also noted the project’s unprecedented speed, telling the gathered audience he’d never witnessed this much work “done in such a short period of time.” While Wolfspeed’s Durham headquarters has been the site of two fatal accidents within the past two years, Regan praised the Chatham construction for being completed with “a laser focus on safety.”
Wolfspeed executives say demand for its patented silicon carbide has necessitated the fast construction, which started in June. Silicon carbide chips are unique alternatives to traditional silicon chips, a substitute Wolfspeed boasts provides more efficient performance when powering electric vehicles, telecommunication devices, and energy storage units among other appliances.
The company, which has evolved in recent years from lighting to chips, currently grows silicon carbide crystals at its Durham facility where it converts the material into blank wafers. Wolfspeed then either sells these wafers to other manufacturers or ships them to its fabrication facility in New York State’s Mohawk Valley.
Once complete, the Siler City site will expand Wolfspeed’s wafer production by a factor of 10, company officials say.
“This is going to be the lifeblood for all of our sites,” said Shawn Lilly, director of facilities at Wolfspeed’s headquarters near Research Triangle Park.
Silicon carbide crystals require extremely hot temperatures to form, around 2500 degrees Celsius, which the company points out is nearly half the temperature of the sun. Elif Balks, the chipmaker’s chief technology officer, said some furnaces are already in place at the Chatham plant.
On an investor call last month, Wolfspeed CEO Gregg Lowe said the Siler City factory will begin producing silicon carbide wafers in the first half of next year.
In September 2022, the N.C. Department of Commerce awarded the company a $76.1 million job development investment grant, or JDIG, to build a materials factory in Chatham County. To benefit from the full financial package, Wolfspeed must create at least 1,802 jobs over five years from 2026 to 2030. The minimum average wage will be $77,753, officials said. Wolfspeed also must retain the 3,023 positions it already had in the state.
