McMahon, Walsh led whirlwind trip to Taiwan to woo Micron suppliers

Syracuse, NY – Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon and Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh led a six-person delegation to Taiwan last week to try to woo Micron Technology suppliers to come to Central New York.

While no deals were made, officials said they made a strong pitch about why Taiwanese companies should set up shop next to Micron’s planned semiconductor plant in Clay.

“There wasn’t a single meeting that wasn’t constructive, productive, where we didn’t learn something important about that business, the industry as a whole, and what it’s going to take for those companies to be successful here in the United States,” said Rob Simpson, president of CenterState CEO, the local economic development agency.

Over two days, the contingent met with seven suppliers, all of which supply Micron’s operations in Taiwan. Micron suggested the companies and wrote letters of introduction, said Bob Petrovich, executive director of the county Industrial Development Agency.

The local officials wouldn’t name the companies, but said they were all Taiwan-based and had no or little presence in the US Some were chemical companies that supply Micron and other chip-makers with the wide array of chemicals needed to make semiconductors.

McMahon said that as Europe and the US are expanding domestic chip manufacturing and offering big subsidies, the Taiwanese companies are paying attention.

“The largest semiconductor ecosystem in the world is Taiwan, and they support that ecosystem,” McMahon said. “But I think there’s an acknowledgment from all the companies that for their businesses to grow, a lot of that growth is going to be diversified across the world.”

The island of Taiwan, which sits 100 miles off the southeast coast of China, is the world’s chip-making capital of the world. More than half of all computer chips are made there, including 90% of the most advanced chips, referred to as “leading-edge.”

Micron has several factories in Taiwan, where it employs 10,000 people and makes the majority of its best-selling memory chips. Micron has $13 billion worth of assets in Taiwan, more than in any other country, according to the company’s most recent annual report.

Micron plans to build four manufacturing plants, or fabs, on the 1,400-acre White Pine Commerce Park, at the corner of Route 31 and Caughdenoy Road. The county Industrial Development Agency bought all that land and will sell it to Micron.

OCIDA also bought more than 100 acres across Route 31 for a supplier industrial park. That’s where officials are trying to lure the Taiwanese companies.

Two other people made the six-day journey to Taiwan: Bill Gilberti, attorney for the development agency; and Dan Feng, of Progressive Expert Consulting, a language instruction tech company, in Syracuse.

Officials said they didn’t know how much the trip cost because bills were still coming in.

The six flew to Taiwan on Saturday, March 16: Walsh said he couldn’t leave before the Syracuse St. Patrick’s Parade that afternoon. It took more than 30 hours to get to Taiwan’s capital, Taipei City, where the group stayed.

Walsh made the parade, but the group from one of New York state’s most Irish cities missed St. Patrick’s Day entirely. Because of the flight time and the crossing of the international dateline, they left on Saturday and landed in Taiwan on Monday. St. Patrick’s Day was Sunday.

The delegation attended the Smart City Summit and Expo on Tuesday, then met with suppliers Wednesday and Thursday. They didn’t have time to see Micron’s major fab, which is in Taichung City, about two hours from Taipei.

There could be more trips to Taiwan in the future, McMahon said.

“We’ll go back in a heartbeat for one of these deals to happen,” he said.