Dutch chip industry petitions for another €900M in public support

In the wake of the 2.7-billion-euro Beethoven project flowing (mostly) to the Brainport region, the Dutch chip industry at large is asking the freshly installed cabinet for another round of support. United in the ChipNL consortium (link in Dutch), more than 30 companies including ASM, Nearfield Instruments, Nexperia and NXP are asking for an annual public investment of 100-150 million euros over the next six years. They pledge to top this up with 100-200 million euros per year, making for a total investment of up to 2.1 billion euros.

ASM CFO Paul Verhagen points out to NOS that other countries are willing to please semiconductor companies in all sorts of ways. If the Netherlands can’t at least partially match such programs, Dutch firms might opt to grow elsewhere. ASML and NXP dropped similar hints over the past few months. We now know that this applied pressure was encouraged by the political driving force of the Beethoven project, Economic Affairs Minister Micky Adriaansens. She already set up the task force in secrecy in the fall of last year, NRC reported (link in Dutch).

ChipNL says it would use the money to strengthen the collaboration between the various components of the Dutch chip supply chain, ie design, manufacturing and packaging.