NAA Event Review: NAA Networking Event hosted by Nexperia
Last month saw our most recent networking event hosted by the global semiconductor manufacturer Nexperia, at their Stockport facility, where we were welcomed by David Fellows, Site Director and Hannah Dolan, Senior Manager – Advocacy and Alliances.
David gave an overview of the business’s history, which dates back to the 1920s when Philips acquired vacuum tubes manufacturer Mullard, whose facility in Hazel Grove became today’s Nexperia Manchester, part of a global business with $2.4 billion revenue; 14,000 employees across five factories; 9.4% global market share and producing over 100 billion units annually in 2024. The business also has a strategic goal to increase revenue to $10 billion by 2030.
An overview of the customer base included Automotive, Industrial and Power, Computing, Consumer Goods, Mobiles and Wearables, with virtually every electronic design in the world using Nexperia parts. For an automotive context, a typical new car uses circa 200 semiconductors.
Delegates were then given an overview of the Manchester site, which has been producing semiconductors for over 50 years and houses Research & Development, wafer fabrication and test activities, with around 1,000 employees.
Due to the delicate nature of semiconductor manufacture, the production environment is around 1,000 times cleaner than a hospital operating theatre, and typically a 6” diameter wafer can contain up to 35,000 individual components, some as small as 1mm x 1mm. The facility has 6,500 square metres of cleanroom facility, which is similar in size to a full-size football pitch.
For obvious reasons, delegates were not able to enter the cleanroom production environment, however, it was possible to tour the extensive laboratory and testing facilities, where as well as simulating real-life applications for the semiconductors, for example in electric power steering systems or steering wheel airbags, the laboratory supporting production and development activities uses a range of state-of-the-art measuring equipment, including microscopes with up to 1,000,000 x magnification capability.
