Pragmatic Semiconductor has welcomed HRH The Princess Royal to officially open the UK’s first 300mm semiconductor wafer fabrication line at Pragmatic Park in Durham. Accordingly, the advanced manufacturing facility produces chips based on Pragmatic’s innovative and unique IC technology.

David Moore, CEO, Pragmatic Semiconductor, hosted HRH The Princess Royal with a tour of the clean room and facilities.  Next, they unveiled a site plaque to mark the occasion. Attendees included key customers, ecosystem partners, investors and government officials.

Pragmatic’s FlexICs are low-cost, more sustainable alternatives to silicon chips, ultra-thin, with a flexible form factor. Particularly, they enable connect, sense and compute capabilities, fueling the Internet of Things (IoT) across multiple sectors including consumer, industrial, healthcare and beyond. The company’s mission is to provide item level intelligence to trillions of smart objects over the next decade across a wide range of applications. Moreover, with significant opportunities in smart packaging of fast-moving consumer goods that will significantly improve levels of reuse and recycling, transforming waste management, and enabling a circular economy. Other use cases include wearables, sensors and flexible controllers.

Advanced IC Facility

Pragmatic Park has capacity to host up to nine fabrication lines, each capable of producing billions of chips per year. Pragmatic’s pioneering sustainable approach extends to its manufacturing, using fewer process steps and a more concentrated footprint, than standard silicon fabs. The company’s innovative, optimised manufacturing process supports extremely rapid production cycles of less than 48 hours, at very low cost.

In addition, the manufacturing process also uses significantly less energy and less water than typical silicon manufacturing, and fewer harmful gases. Pragmatic’s modular ‘Fab-in-a-Box’ approach, supports co-location of end-to-end FlexIC manufacturing at customers sites, rationalizing extended supply chains and providing additional levels of security and resilience. The manufacturing facility enables the company to meet the growing demand for its unique technology from customers worldwide. Over the next five years Pragmatic anticipates creating over 500 highly skilled jobs in the North-East of England and Cambridge.

Dave Moore, CEO, Pragmatic Semiconductor said: “Today’s official opening marks a key milestone in Pragmatic’s growth trajectory and for the UK on the global semiconductor stage. I am incredibly proud of what the team has achieved and the ambition of our mission to enable item level intelligence in over a trillion sustainable, smart items over the next decade. Such intelligence at scale has the power to accelerate the digital transformation across industries. Sustainability is at the very core of our technology and extends to how FlexICs enable our customers to further drive innovations and pathways through their products and services towards global net zero goals.”

-1 April 2024-