Flemish government to invest in 450mm fab project from IMEC

The Flemish Minister of Innovation, Ingrid Lieten, has made a commitment to invest in the building of clean room facilities for 450-mm diameter wafer processing at the IMEC research institute's pilot wafer fab in Leuven, Belgium.

No specific amount of money from the Flemish government was disclosed but IMEC said the support of the Flemish government will enable the building of a 100 million euro (about $120 million) clean room infrastructure. IMEC said that in total it plans to spend 1 billion euro (about $1.2 billion) on the wafer fab over the next 5 years with a goal of opening the 450-mm clean room facilities in 2015.

IMEC is negotiating a support package with the European Commission and IMEC's industrial partners: the foundries, fabless and fablite companies, equipment and material suppliers.