Querétaro Seeks to Join the Semiconductor Supply Chain
The fact is, the company has the potential to integrate capabilities in design, printed circuit board assembly, and packaging and transportation processes, according to Marco Antonio del Prete Tercero, Secretary of Sustainable Development (Sedesu) for Querétaro.
“Today we have identified three or four companies (in Querétaro), not only for design but also for manufacturing, a research center, and, of course, many use semiconductors in their processes, but this is something we’re promoting because the production chain is very extensive and very valuable, and we’re creating more mechanisms so they can participate more,” he explained.
With the goal of growing this industry in the country, he announced that the Secretary of Economy (SE), Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón, will soon meet with representatives from various states to discuss ways to attract investments related to semiconductors.
Regarding the type of supply chain the state plans to develop, the head of Sedesu stated that the first step is to promote understanding of the industry with the aim of building the skills needed to design, assemble, and transport printed circuit boards.
“The first component of this production chain is knowledge—the skills needed to design, assemble, and transport printed circuit boards. That’s what we’ll be focusing on—not so much on making the wafers. (…) For example, what QSM is doing is that once they have the blank wafer—let’s put it that way—they add components and a design to the wafer itself to produce semiconductors,” he said.
“The most expensive part, environmentally speaking, is the wafer, and we don’t make that here in Querétaro, but what QSM does is take the wafer—without any information or patterns—and add components, minerals, or materials to provide connectivity or conductivity. Then they create the design for the semiconductors that will be cut from the wafer itself, and once those semiconductors are ready, they’re mounted on printed circuit boards. So, it’s a high-value chain,” he said.
The process with the greatest environmental impact is wafer fabrication; therefore, he ruled out that this would be the type of processing the entity would be interested in.
“The preliminary environmental impact report will include a report on water consumption; that report will be included in the Annual Operating Certificate to monitor water consumption at data centers. (…) This is primarily in the interest of transparency and providing timely information to citizens. (…) We are going to include in the data center operating guidelines a report—a preliminary environmental impact report—that addresses emissions, waste, and water consumption,” he explained.
In this context, activists and organized civil society have called for a transparent assessment of the environmental impact of this industry, 72% of the country’s installed capacity for which is concentrated in Querétaro.
