The proposed US$1.2 billion Silicon Harbour facility is likely to fail unless the Government is willing to back the construction of a cluster of three more multi-billion-dollar factories, according to Motorola Asia-Pacific president C.D. Tam.
These silicon wafer-manufacturing plants would need to be progressively more technologically advanced, and consequently, more expensive, with the most leading-edge one likely to cost more than $3 billion to build, Mr Tam said.
'One wafer fab is not going to be a success,' he said, citing the rapid advances in the area of manufacturing high-value silicon wafers - the basic building block of semiconductor chips.
But Mr Tam says that Motorola, which three years ago seriously considered building a wafer-manufacturing plant in Hong Kong, is not interested this time.
'I doubt very much if we would want to build [a wafer fab here],' he said, adding that within this timeframe, Motorola's factory in Tianjin was enough.
Motorola, which has been making chips in Hong Kong since 1967, has about 2,600 staff here. Most work at Motorola's factory in Tai Po, built in 1990, which Mr Tam helped create. There, raw wafers are used to assemble chips. It is less risky than making wafers, but less profitable.
More than one wafer factory at the 200-hectare Silicon Harbour site has been discussed as a possibility, though it is understood not to be part of the main proposal forwarded by Hambrecht & Quist Asia-Pacific, the investment bank proposing Silicon Harbour.
