Fujitsu Ltd had played its cards so close to its chest on its investment in memory chip fabrication facilities in the UK that when the announcement came yesterday, it wrong-footed all the pundits by being four times the size anyone had forecast. Fujitsu plans to invest a massive UKP400m – $680m – building and equipping the plant in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham and looks to be employing 1,500 people there by the end of 1994. Work will start this month, and production – of 1M-bit and 4M-bit memory chips for the European market – starts next year. The Department of Trade & Industry is putting up UKP30m in regional grants modest, given the scale of the project, which will make the UK a major source of commodity chips – Motorola Inc and NEC Corp already fabricate in Scotland. The choice of site is a disappointment for Eire – Fujitsu has had a chip assembly operation in Dublin for years. It also own’s ICL’s old Manchester chip design centre, and will now expand it.
