You may not be aware, but Staphorst is the best place in the world for a new wafer fab.
We Staphorstians are excited about the Beethoven project, which provides billions of euros in funding to Eindhoven to keep ASML happy. Apart from erecting buildings and infrastructure for this purpose, the real challenge is to find all the talent needed. For this reason, four regions have been selected to educate the workforce for this industry: Eindhoven, Twente, Delft and Groningen.
As one peek at the map will prove, from Staphorst, all four regions are all around us. Staphorst is the center of gravity of these four regions! This is no coincidence: Staphorst is where the magic happens. Imagine how much easier it would be to talk about “the Staphorst region.”
In the Staphorst ecosystem, we find, for example, the city of Hoogeveen. ASML was spun out of Philips, and Hoogeveen was the place where Philips produced vacuum cleaners. And you can already guess: for chip wafer fabs, you need very clean rooms. With our vacuum cleaner technology, we’re world-leading in that sense. We can upscale our vacuum cleaner technology to the level needed for clean rooms.
The next important city in our ecosystem is Drachten. Here, Philips has been developing electric shavers for many decades. But did you know that modern shavers have two or more knives to cut facial hair? The magic is that between the passing of those two knives, the hair grows about one nanometer! So, we have plenty of experience with 1nm technology already! All we need to do is scale up production. In that sense, we’re already beyond what ASML machines can produce today.
We need a location for our SMIC (Staphorst Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) wafer fab. We have excellent churches for this purpose: large buildings with enough air treatment space below and above the production floor. They have solid foundations and are earthquake-proof. In our churches, many of us have seen the light, so we’re prepared for the emerging field of photonics as well.
One of the main challenges in this business is, of course, finding sufficient talent. Since we’re located at the center of gravity of the Beethoven project, Staphorst is the logical place to relocate all the talented professionals. We’ll develop a vibrant village center to attract them. Moreover, we have a very high birth rate in Staphorst, with families having up to 12 children, so our local talent supply is clearly safeguarded for the future. With such a growth rate, we expect to be self-supplying in the long term and won’t require all those foreign individuals.
Minister, we trust that you share our vision and ask for an investment of 4.8 billion euros. In our proposed “Bach project,” we’ll make Europe independent from external sources and SMIC the number one chip production on this planet as well as in heaven. I certainly believe we can make this happen. And when we in Staphorst believe in something, it becomes our truth!
