About 60 per cent construction of Micron Technology’s first semiconductor plant at Sanand has been completed and will be handed over to the company between September-December 2025, said Tata Projects Ltd.
“We had started the work on Phase-1 of the project in July 2024 and are expecting to finish it later this year, tentatively between September-December. We have to verify and test the entire facility before handing it over to Micron. Currently, 60 per cent of the work has been completed, including civil works,” Amit Agarwal, project director of Micron Semiconductor project, Tata Projects, said during an interaction at the project site on Tuesday.
The Phase-1 of Micron’s new semiconductor facility in Gujarat,which will include 500,000 square feet of planned cleanroom space, was earlier targeted to become operational in late 2024. The Assembly, Testing, Marking and Packaging (ATMP) facility will enable assembly and test manufacturing for both DRAM and NAND products and address demand from domestic and international markets. These semiconductor products are used in smartphones, servers and personal computers.
“The work of cleanrooms has not yet begun. But the materials for its construction have started coming to the warehouses. The backend works like construction of prototypes and verification are currently going on and the construction will begin by July 2025, ,” Agarwal said. The project will have multiple structures including central utility building, fabrication building, warehouse, administration building among others.
Modularisation strategy
“The main fabrication building is being constructed using a modularisation strategy. This is being used for the first time in any Micron project. Here, parts of the building are assembled on the ground and then lifted. We are not using cranes. Each module, weighing 710 tonnes, is lifted using strand jacks and then they are being assembled and bolted. This is a big achievement. Micron teams from US and Singapore have already visited the project site so that they could replicate this in their future projects,” Agarwal said.
Over one lakh cubic meters of concrete has already been used in construction of this facility. “Of the 25,000 metric tonnes of structural steel that will be used in this facility, we have installed 10,000 metric tonnes. We also have to lay HVAC pipelines which will be almost 20 kilometers in length,” he said, adding that Tata Projects was taking technological support from Micron in constructing the facility including the cleanrooms. The scope of work for Tata Projects at the project site include engineering, civil and structural works, as well as mechanical and electrical works. Facilities for storing cryogenic gases like Liquid Nitrogen and Helium were also being built at the project site which will also have a facility to store 20 million litres of water per day.
The project site at Sanand is spread over 93 acres and an estimated 50 per cent of the total area is being used for Phase-1 of construction. “Last week we achieved 1 crore LTI-free (Loss Time due to Injury) safe man-hours at the project site, which is a record for all Micron project sites across the world,” Agarwal said, adding that on an average 3,500 people were working at the project site at Sanand. “We expect this workforce to increase to 5,000 as work peaks at our site in the coming days,” he added.
Proposed investment
Micron’s proposed investment is $825 million over the two phases of the project which will create up to 5,000 new direct jobs. Under the government’s “Modified Assembly, Testing, Marking and Packaging (ATMP) Scheme,” Micron will receive 50 per cent fiscal support for the total project cost from the Indian central government and incentives representing 20 per cent of the total project cost from the State of Gujarat. The combined investment by Micron and the two government entities over the course of both phases will be up to $2.75 billion.