Speech by Minister Lim Hng Kiang at the Groundbreaking Ceremony for the Expansion of Micron’s Nand Flash Memory Fabrication Facility at 1 North Coast Drive

Mr Mark Adams, President of Micron Technology

Mr Wayne Allan, Vice President Wafer Fabs, Micron Technology

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

Introduction

Good morning. I am pleased to join you today for the ground breaking for the expansion of the Singapore NAND flash memory fabrication facility. To the management and staff of Micron, I would like to congratulate you on this important milestone of your company’s growth in Singapore.

Since its entry into Singapore in 1998, Micron has grown its operations and is today one of the largest electronics employers in Singapore with more than 7,000 employees.   I am delighted that Micron has decided to add to this impressive performance with this decision to expand its Singapore fab.

This US$4 billion investment underscores Micron’s confidence in, and its long-term commitment to, Singapore. This expansion will double Micron’s manufacturing capacity in Singapore and will manufacture leading edge memory products, making Singapore Micron’s largest and most advanced wafer fab location in the world. The expansion is also expected to create at least 500 skilled jobs, contributing over S$1 billion of value-add to the Singapore economy each year when fully ramped up.

Micron’s expansion will allow Singapore to tap on new growth opportunities in the Data Storage industry

Micron’s investment comes at an opportune time.  The data storage industry is rapidly transforming in two dimensions, with the increasingly pervasive use of social media and the massive growth of the Internet of Things, particularly for industrial applications such as robotics and urban mobility: First, storage capacities need to grow at a faster pace as the world creates data at an ever-increasing pace; Second, new storage technologies and architectures will become even more important in enabling effective management and retrieval of  desired information from the ever-wider ocean of data in a timely and cost-effective fashion.

These trends have resulted in the growing adoption of solid state drives, which use NAND flash memory chips such as those manufactured by Micron, to complement hard disk drives and tape drives in meeting society’s changing data storage needs. Micron’s latest investment therefore complements Singapore’s leadership in hard disk media manufacturing. With many market leaders manufacturing and undertaking R&D in Singapore, Singapore is well positioned to capture the growth opportunities in the data storage industry.

The Electronics industry is a key pillar of the Singapore economy, which the Government remains committed to grow and develop

Beyond the Data Storage industry, the Government expects the broader Electronics cluster to remain a key pillar of the Singapore economy. In 2013, the Electronics industry accounted for 5% of Singapore’s GDP. It was also the largest contributor to business expenditure for R&D, and had the second highest labour productivity among manufacturing industries. Micron’s investment and the other capacity expansions

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announced last year affirm Singapore’s continued competitiveness and strength in Electronics Manufacturing.

The Government will continue to partner the Electronics industry to increase its competitiveness by enhancing its manufacturing and R&D capabilities. For example, we will support companies to invest in new technologies to further improve labour productivity, energy efficiency and achieve best-in-class manufacturing quality. We will also continue to support companies to augment their manufacturing activities with process R&D to enable Singapore to win in profitable niche areas, such as NAND flash memory, specialty Integrated Circuits (ICs), Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) filters and hard disk media. Finally, we will continue to invest in public R&D in electronics to develop critical capabilities that pre-position Singapore to seize opportunities offered by new or disruptive technologies.

Conclusion

In closing, let me reiterate my appreciation for Micron’s continued confidence in Singapore’s Electronics industry.  Congratulations on today’s ground breaking, and I look forward to joining you in celebrating the opening of the expansion in 2016. Thank you.

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Some examples include HP’s opening of its second Indigo Ink manufacturing facility in Singapore in September 2014. AFPD also announced that it commenced mass production of AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) in Singapore.