IBM plots US$730M expansion of Canadian semiconductor site

International Business Machines Corp. will expand its Canadian semiconductor packaging and testing plant with more than C$1 billion ($730 million) in investments over the next five years.

Focused on advanced semiconductor components, IBM’s 800-acre site in Bromont, Quebec, about 50 miles east of Montreal, is the largest of its kind in North America, and home to Canada’s first universal quantum computer. 

Packaging, a technical process in which chips are transformed into microelectronic components, is an essential part of the supply chain and requires a skilled workforce. There’s very little semiconductor packaging capacity on the continent, and most of it is at the 1,000-employee Bromont facility.

“Even if we produce the processors at factories in the US or Canada, we would then have to send them back to Taiwan for packaging,” Jamie Thomas, general manager of technology lifecycle services at IBM, said in an interview. “What you really need is a full supply chain onshore.”