A company that produces silicon wafers in Italy. A white fly from an industrial point of view, even more precious in light of the microchip crisis that has affected entire production sectors, starting with the automotive sector. The chairman Mauro Pedrotti and the plant manager Marco Sciamanna recount company dates and passages. Today Memc Electronic is part of the Global Wafers Group and in Italy it has two production plants, in Novara, with 750 employees and in Merano, with another 250 people.
But what is the history of Memc and how does a company with a production specialization from the Far East reach us in the heart of the Po Valley? “We come from the world of chemistry and in particular from the Montedison Group – says president Pedrotti – with a conversion started in the seventies towards production related to silicon and the world of semiconductors, at that time still in its infancy”. In Merano we start with a small pilot line and then the specialization takes hold. In the Eighties the change of hands arrives, first in the hands of a German and then American group – in the orbit of the Monsanto Group – with settlements also in Asia. Hence the acronym Memc, Monsanto electronic material company. In 2016, the new owner arrived, the Global Wafers Group of Taiwan, which today is the third world supplier of silicon wafers with the aim, thanks to an ongoing acquisition, to climb one position and become the second player in the world. by volumes.
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The history of the Memc of Novara is a history of international and internal competition within the group to maintain industrial skills and volumes. “We play a derby every day and in the end the home game is always the most difficult,” says Pedrotti. “Thanks to the merger with the American group – he adds – we started playing in the Champions League, we have acquired skills and started various technology transfer processes”. The production processes between Novara and Merano are perfectly integrated, so much so that every day a shuttle transports the products between the two plants. The processes are vertically integrated, with the North East plant dealing with single crystals while Novara produces the slices, therefore the finished product which is then sold to big players in the semiconductor sector such as StMicroelectronics.
The question then is: how can we remain competitive in a sector in which the productions are all moved to the Far East? «If we consider only the costs – explains the president Pedrotti – it is really difficult to remain competitive. We have two elements, typical of the country system, which are the cost of labor and the cost of energy, which are higher than in many other parts of the world. If we remain in terms of costs, then there is really no competition. So you have to move to another level and consider continuous innovation, flexibility and the ability to follow customers “.
One of the success factors of Memc is the ability to build close relationships with customers and develop new product lines. Production focuses on customized silicon wafers based on customer needs. Quality and service in the foreground, therefore, with the dynamics of the cost which, however, is triggered on a product that is more difficult to produce, the result of a more complex engineering process. In this delicate balance between innovation, flexibility and the ability to engineer new products, with higher added value, lies the key to the success of a company like Memc, which maintains a consistent production base in Italy that has grown over the years.