DuPont plans to build a new production facility in Glasgow to support the expansion of the company’s semiconductor materials business.
The new facility will likely be the first building in a 1-million-square-foot logistics park planned near Route 896 and Old Cooch’s Bridge Road south of Glasgow High School and the Four Seasons shopping center. Once complete, about 70 current employees will move to the site. DuPont intends to hire about 10 new positions.
DuPont estimates it will invest $50 million in the facility. The state on Monday approved taxpayer-funded grants up to $1.64 million to support job growth and construction of the building.
“The DuPont Company has been part of Delaware’s DNA for 220 years,” Gov. John Carney said in a statement. “With this expansion of their semiconductor division, the company is showing their commitment to our state and workforce.”
One member of the Council on Development Finance, the state board tasked with determining whether to give businesses money to relocate to or expand in Delaware, voted against the grants. State Rep. Ed Osienski of Newark pointed to DuPont’s history of downsizing within Delaware as cause for concern.
“It’s great that you’re considering staying here, but I question the need for Delawareans to come up with $1.6 million to get DuPont to remain here and add some jobs when Delaware suffered a lot,” Osienski said.
DuPont has made several moves in recent years to alter the makeup of its business, reorienting around electronics, electric vehicles and clean energy. Last year’s $5.2 billion acquisition of Rogers Corp., an Arizona-based electronics maker, was the largest step in that direction. The company has since agreed to sell a significant portion of its polymer and performance resin lines, known as DuPont’s mobility and materials segment, to a Texas-based chemical and special materials company.
“The timing could not be better to enter these markets,” DuPont Chairman and CEO Ed Breen said in November.
DuPont is trying to capitalize on soaring demand for semiconductors, the microchips crucial to the production of most modern electronics, including cellphones, computers and cars. Increasing production of semiconductors in the U.S. is a priority of Congress, which last month passed a $280 billion bill designed to fund research and give subsidies and tax credits to companies that manufacture chips domestically.
In Delaware, DuPont’s semiconductor team makes materials used in a process called chemical mechanical planarization. It’s a technique by which materials later used to make semiconductors are smoothed or polished to highly-specific standards.
Existing employees will move to the 385,000-square-foot Glasgow plant from a DuPont facility in the Diamond State Industrial Park off Bellevue Road. The new larger facility will help DuPont meet the industry’s recent growth.
The state’s grants are divided into a capital expenditure grant for construction of $1,578,000 and a jobs grant of $65,550 tied to the creation of about 10 positions.
The Council on Development Finance on Monday also approved about $250,000 in grants for Royale Pigments & Chemicals. The company relocated its headquarters from New Jersey to Bear two years ago and now plans to add a second site in Seaford.
Plans for the First State Logistics Park call for two additional buildings bordering the DuPont plant totaling about 700,00 square feet. It’s being developed by Logistics Property Co., a Chicago-based company.
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Contact Brandon Holveck at bholveck@delawareonline.com. Follow him on Twitter @holveck_brandon.
