Pragmatic Welcomes HRH The Princess Royal to Pragmatic Park

Pragmatic Semiconductor welcomed HRH The Princess Royal to officially open the UK’s first 300mm semiconductor wafer fabrication line (fab) at Pragmatic Park in Durham.

The advanced manufacturing facility produces chips based on Pragmatic’s flexible integrated circuit technology. HRH The Princess Royal was hosted by David Moore, CEO, Pragmatic Semiconductor, with a tour of the clean room and facilities.

Pragmatic’s FlexICs are low-cost, more sustainable alternatives to silicon chips, ultra-thin, with a flexible form factor they enable connect, sense and compute capabilities, fueling the Internet of Things (IoT) across multiple sectors including consumer, industrial, healthcare and beyond.

The company’s mission is to provide item level intelligence to trillions of smart objects over the next decade across a wide range of applications with significant opportunities in smart packaging of fast-moving consumer goods that will significantly improve levels of reuse and recycling, transforming waste management, and enabling a circular economy. Other use cases include wearables, sensors and flexible controllers. 

Pragmatic Park has capacity to host up to nine fabrication lines, each capable of producing billions of chips per year. Pragmatic’s sustainable approach extends to its manufacturing, using fewer process steps and a more concentrated footprint, than standard silicon fabs.

The company’s optimized manufacturing process supports extremely rapid production cycles of less than 48 hours, at very low cost. The manufacturing process also uses significantly less energy and less water than typical silicon manufacturing, and fewer harmful gases.

Pragmatic’s modular “Fab-in-a-Box” approach supports co-location of end-to-end FlexIC manufacturing at customers sites. The manufacturing facility enables the company to meet the growing demand for its unique technology from customers worldwide. Over the next five years Pragmatic anticipates creating over 500 highly skilled jobs in the North-East of England and Cambridge.

“Today’s official opening marks a key milestone in Pragmatic’s growth trajectory and for the UK on the global semiconductor stage,” Moore said. “I am incredibly proud of what the team has achieved and the ambition of our mission to enable item level intelligence in over a trillion sustainable, smart items over the next decade. Such intelligence at scale has the power to accelerate the digital transformation across industries.” 

“Pragmatic’s innovative approach is reflective of our own, as is its commitment to helping solve business challenges,” added Francisco Melo, president Solutions Group, Avery Dennison. “I look forward to our clients harnessing the potential of Pragmatic’s flexible integrated circuits as part of our evolving inlay portfolio.”