Edwards Vacuum invited government leaders Tuesday to the future site of its newest facility at the Genesee County Science Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Park to break ground on the construction project it began in April.
Edwards parent company, Atlas Copco Group, said it expects to begin production by late next year and will hire 280 new employees as part of Phase 1.
“Today, we are not just breaking ground. We are building the future,” Geert Follens, Atlas Copco Group President of Vacuum Technique Business Area, said.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he personally called the company following the passage of his CHIPS and Science Act urging it to make upstate New York the home of the first dry pump factory in the country. Edwards is utilizing an Investment Tax Credit created by that legislation and is pursuing federal incentives also created to spur research, development, manufacturing and job creation in the burgeoning semiconductor industry.
“We knew because of the great workforce here and the cheap water and the good electricity and the good local government, that Genesee Valley could compete with Silicon Valley,” Schumer said.
The technology Edwards will produce is crucial to semiconductor manufacturing and the company expects large fabrication operations like Micron in Central New York and GlobalFoundries in the Capital Region to be customers.
“To make the chips you use, all kinds of different gasses and stuff but to keep the room perfectly clean you need to get rid of those gasses and it’s vacuum technology that does that,” Schumer said.
“These are our customers and this facility of course would be meaningless without that growth in the U.S.-based fab market,” Kent Stobbart, Edwards Vacuum Semiconductor Division VP of Operation, said.
Last year, the federal government designated the I-90 corridor between Buffalo Rochester and Syracuse as one of 12 federal tech hubs. Last month, Schumer announced $40 million to implement its plan to become the country’s semiconductor industry leader.
“By the end of the decade, 255% of the chips produced in the U.S. will be made within a few miles of this great I-90 corridor,” Schumer said.
Edwards said by time all phases of the Genesee County project are complete, it will have invested nearly $320 million to build the facility, will create more than 600 new jobs on top of the hundreds of construction jobs and will house some of the most sophisticated, cutting-edge equipment in the industry.
Edwards said the new factory will be emission-free and fully-electric with most of its power produced by hydroelectric sources. The company is working with Monroe Community College, Erie Community College and the Northland Workforce Training Center in Buffalo to train prospective employees.
It said the facility will eventually have the capacity to produce 20,000 dry pumps every year.
