Maharashtra approves Adani-Tower Semiconductor’s $10 bn semicon facility 

Adani Group’s foray into semiconductor fabrication with Israel-based Tower Semiconductor has received the Maharashtra government’s nod. On Friday, the Maharashtra Cabinet approved a semiconductor fabrication unit to be established by the two firms in Panvel, Mumbai with an investment of $10 billion. 

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis posted on social media website X that the unit will be built in two phases. The first phase will see an investment of about $7 billion and produce 40,000 semiconductor wafers monthly. For the second phase, the investment will be $3 billion, taking the total output to 80,000 wafers per month. The unit is expected to generate more than 5,000 jobs. 

Notably, earlier this year, the Israel-based semiconductor company had submitted a proposal to the government for setting up a chipmaking plant in the country to manufacture 65 nanometre and 40 nanometre chips. Before that Tower Semiconductor’s proposal to set up $3 billion plant in Karnataka in partnership with ISMC fell through due to the latter’s then-impending merger with Intel.

The Adani-Tower Semiconductor unit follows this week’s another major news in the Indian chipmaking landscape. The Union Cabinet approved Kaynes Semiconductor’s plans to set up an assembly, testing, marking, and packaging (ATMP) unit in Sanand, Gujarat with an investment of ₹3,300 crore. The ATMP in Sanand is the fourth semiconductor facility to receive approval from the government under the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM).

The capacity of this unit will be 60 lakh chips per day. These chips will cater to a wide variety of applications in industrial, automotive, electric vehicles, consumer electronics, telecom, mobile phones, etc. The project will cover an area of 46 acres. Notably, in August, the electronics manufacturing services (EMS) provider had bought land with an investment of about ₹5,000 crore, several media reports said.