Negotiations about the construction of a new Intel chip factory in Magdeburg have apparently reached the home straight. Chancellor Olaf Scholz will receive the head of the US group, Pat Gelsinger, in the Chancellery on Monday, said Deputy Government Spokesman Wolfgang Büchner on Friday. The state capital of Saxony-Anhalt was awarded the contract for the billion-euro project more than a year ago.
The Handelsblatt had previously reported on the planned date before which the final details would have to be finalized. In recent months, the focus has been on the level of subsidies. Intel referred to increased costs and demanded more than the originally promised 6.8 billion euros.
So far, Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner had resisted it. “There is no more money in the household,” he said in a newspaper interview a few days ago. According to circles familiar with the negotiations, an increase in the funding amount to “around ten billion euros” is currently being discussed. However, then it would also have to be discussed whether Intel would not have to increase its investments in Magdeburg.
The background is also EU subsidy law issues. A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Economics emphasized that there is no automatic relationship between the funding and the investment amount. “The goal of the federal government is clear: we want to strengthen Germany as a microelectronics location. This is of great importance for the transformation and technological sovereignty, and that is why we are holding intensive talks.”
The Magdeburg plant was originally supposed to cost 17 billion euros. At the same time, Intel gave the go-ahead for a project in Poland on Friday. A factory for testing and assembling processors is to be built in Wroclaw for $4.6 billion. Several states had offered themselves as a location. “Poland was just a bit hungrier to get the bid,” said CEO Gelsinger. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called the factory “the largest greenfield investment in Poland’s history”. Around 2000 highly qualified jobs are to be created in the plant, which complements the plant in Magdeburg, by 2027, and several thousand more jobs are to be created indirectly.