Wednesday February 2 11:24 AM ET
Intel to Buy Rockwell Chip Plant, to Invest $1.5 Bln
SANTA CLARA (Reuters) - Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - news) plans to buy a chip-making plant from Rockwell International Corp. (NYSE:ROK - news) and invest $1.5 billion in it, in a move Intel sees significantly boosting its short-term manufacturing capacity.
Intel, the world's biggest chip maker, expects to begin manufacturing flash memory at the Colorado Springs, Colo. wafer fabrication facility by late this year. The facility is currently vacant.
The company said it has signed a letter of intent with Rockwell, but did not disclose details of the agreement.
''This facility will give us the ability to rapidly add more manufacturing capacity in order to address our customers' growing
demand for a wide variety of our products,'' said Mike Splinter of Intel's Technology and Manufacturing Group.
The Colorado Springs facility consists of two wafer ''fabs'' and several support buildings. The first, a 268,000 square foot manufacturing and support facility, was built in the early 1980s and will be converted into a sort and test facility.
The second was built in 1996 but never utilized. It is a 676,000 square foot facility that will be equipped to manufacture flash memory and logic components used in a wide variety of communications, networking and computer equipment.
Intel plans to install its 0.18-micron manufacturing technology in the plant.
The plant will result in the creation of more than a thousand new jobs in Colorado Springs, Intel said.
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