NEW DELHI: The Vedanta-Foxconn joint venture (JV) has resubmitted an application for a 40-nanometer (nm) node fabrication plant. The JV had to reapply as the government recently made changes to the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for semiconductor schemes.
According to government sources, Vedanta had applied for 40-nanometer (nm) node technology. “Yes, the JV had resubmitted their application,” said an official.
In 2022, Vedanta applied for a 28 nm node; however, the government asked them to resubmit the application. This time it is believed that the company had made many modifications to its initial application. The Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw recently said since the programme was first launched it has undergone significant changes in the past year.
“The minister said the market dynamics have changed a lot in the past two years as the electric vehicle industry has come up and the telecom industry has grown. Earlier, there was a race for the lowest nodes, but now it is for mature nodes,” said Vaishnaw.
The government opened the application for Rs 76,000 crore PLI scheme in January 2022, at that time only three applications had come -- one from a Vedanta-Foxconn joint venture, another from Next Orbit Ventures, which has partnered with Israel’s Tower Semiconductor, and a third from Singapore-based IGSS Ventures.
On June 1, Meity reopened the applications for the semiconductor fabrication plants and started accepting and evaluating new applications. As per the new guidelines, the government has increased the financial incentive of 50 per cent of the project cost for companies on any node. In the old scheme, the incentives varied based on wafer node size.
Computer storage chip maker Micron is the first company to get approval under the PLI scheme and the company will set up its semiconductor assembly and test plant in Gujarat.