UK chip giant: We’d be better off in the US – we can’t even put in a plug here
The chief executive and founder of one of Britain’s most prominent semiconductor companies has warned red tape and planning delays are holding back the UK’s chip industry – with potentially serious consequences for the economy and national security.
“We get approached by the US frequently. Whether it’s Arizona, whether it’s Indiana, whether it’s North Carolina, we’re constantly being approached and they’re putting things on the table: ‘We can offer you this, we can offer you that,”’ he explained.
By contrast, Paragraf’s chief highlighted the firms’ struggles against local planners and electricity companies in the UK just to bring in a new power cable at its manufacturing facility in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.
“It would surprise you, I tell you, what has to be done just to plug something in,” Dr Simon Thomas, who founded Paragraf in 2017, said.
Dr Thomas made the comments in an interview with the Telegraph, whilst noting that Paragraf had received multiple international approaches from the United States.
The Cambridge-based chipmaker has become one of the most prominent companies in the UK semiconductor sector, and is the only company globally to utilise graphene in its computer chips.
The material is expected to have a transformative impact across a number of different industries, with its qualities including conductivity and strength.
But Paragraf’s boss has previously threatened to leave the UK due to what he describes as a “paralysis” and lack of clarity in the government’s industrial strategy.
His comments come as the importance of the semiconductor sector shoots up the political agenda of governments around the globe, after pandemic-related supply chain shortages pummelled numerous industries.
Geopolitical tension between China and Taiwan, who are responsible for 60 per cent of the global supply, has also fuelled a race to secure domestic manufacturing capacity.
On Taiwan’s success, Dr Thomas said “They invested heavily. They made the science parks, they invested in schools and universities for people to understand what high technology was.”
By contrast, he criticised a “lack of openness” in UK science parks and industrial zones.
“We have the clusters like the semiconductor cluster down in South Wales, we have the catapult centres and so forth. But you try and get information between those different clusters or between those different investment activities. It’s really difficult to get a clear landscape picture,” he told the Telegraph.
“While we welcome the publication of the semiconductor strategy and finally the government’s commitment to driving this industry forward, the content is quite frankly flaccid,” Dr Thomas said at the time.