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To: FJB who wrote (36926)	8/21/2000 9:45:38 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

Tower inks construction contract for planned fab in Israel Semiconductor Business News (08/21/00, 06:46:40 PM EDT) MIGDAL HAEMEK, Israel -- Silicon foundry Tower Semiconductor Ltd. here today took another step toward making a new 8-inch wafer fab a reality by announcing an alliance with a trio of construction companies. Tower said it has awarded the contract to build its initial 8-inch fab to: M+W Zander AG of Stuttgart, Germany; Baran Ltd. of Israel; and their co-owned Israeli-based subsidiary Meissner-Baran. The $200 million facilities project--which has been in the works for some time--will be executed in three phases, according to Rafi Levin, co-chief executive of Tower Semiconductor. "This is an important milestone for Tower on its way to constructing its new fab," Levin said. "We expect to break ground in Q4 of this year, following the approval of a grant from the Israeli government and securing the required financing,'' Levin added. Tower plans to commence construction of the much needed fab later this year, pending the approval of the Israeli government grant and securing the required financing. No other details were provided. Dubbed Fab-2, Tower's new plant will start up as a 0.18-micron facility, capable of processing 33,000 eight-inch wafers a month. Using advanced CMOS technology recently licensed from Japan's Toshiba Corp. (see March 28 story), the new fab will move into production by early 2002, according to officials from Tower. When completed, Fab-2 will employ approximately 3,000 workers.