While US President Joe Biden is claiming billions of dollars to bring semiconductor fabs home, his Canadian counterpart Justin Trudeau is promoting Bromont, which has key fabs like IBM and Teledyne DALSA.
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“I believe that the largest semiconductor packaging factory in North America is in Bromont, Quebec,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at the Three Amigos Summit earlier this year.
On several occasions during his trip, Justin Trudeau commended the expertise of Quebec workers in the strategic semiconductor sector.
Such is the appetite of our neighbors to the south that Joe Biden has just injected $52 billion to revive semiconductor manufacturing, a thirst that is being felt in Bromont, which has the world’s largest maker of sensors.
Discrete Factory
This sensor factory is Teledyne Dalsa’s in Bromont, less well known than IBM’s across the street. It was she who was able to visit Le Journal.
Founded in 1976 under the name Mitel, the phone components factory was purchased by Ontario company Dalsa, which sold it to Teledyne of California.
Today, its 500 employees are a powerful link in the race for semiconductors, which have become the “new oil,” as Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger puts it.
“Joe Biden needs us to make these factories work,” says his vice president of strategy and partnership, Claude Jean, with a grin while touring the heart of the factory on Boulevard de l’Aéroport.
Over the years Teledyne Dalsa of Bromont has built a worldwide reputation for manufacturing sophisticated sensors.
Image, motion, pressure, ultraviolet, infrared sensors… its components are found in a variety of objects, from artificial respirators to Wii Fit controllers, including vehicles, phones and airplanes.
“We’re doing more and more of this in autonomous cars, which have to have an incredible number of cameras,” explains Claude Jean.
According to Alix Patners, automakers lost $280 billion in sales last year due to chip shortages, hence Americans’ eagerness to move production and assembly back to America.
“Clean rooms”
In Bromont, the system is regulated to the quarter turn. Do not enter who wants. During our visit, their director, Sébastien Michel, presented “his clean rooms”.
Photo Pierre Paul Poulin
The Journal team was able to observe the “clean rooms”, these areas freed from all dust particles.
“We have class 10 clean rooms. Dust and humidity are controlled because semiconductor manufacturing is very sensitive to the environment,” continues Sébastien Michel.
“We have a good $200 million worth of machines in the factory. To remain competitive, you have to renew yourself every year and bring others with you,” he stresses.
When asked why Quebec excels in this global race, Sébastien Michel doesn’t give a damn: he praises the expertise of Quebec’s staff.
“Anyone can buy the equipment we have here, but the way we use it and the recipes required 40 years of innovation from the staff,” he explains.
“A lot of suppliers in Asia, in China, are good for low costs, but if you have more niche needs, it doesn’t work, while we do the opposite,” he proudly concludes.
– With Guillaume St-Pierre
Teledyne DALSA’s Bromont facility in brief
- Foundation, endowment : 1976 (as a means)
- employee : 500
- Possible processes: 1000
- Specialization: Manufacture of semiconductors
- Elements used: 37
- Owner: Teledyne DALSA, a Canadian subsidiary of American giant Teledyne Technologies
Source: Teledyne DALSA
The new mecca of advanced electronics?
Is Bromont on the way to becoming the new Mecca of cutting-edge technology? It is definitely the wish of the mayor of the city, who does not hide his ambitions since Quebec has imposed the label of innovation zone on it.
“I want us to become the Silicon Valley of the Northeast,” Louis Villeneuve, mayor of Bromont, told the Journal.
“Our great pride in the science park is that it has been recognized as an innovation zone,” he added.
Almost a year ago, Prime Minister François Legault announced that Bromont would have one of Quebec’s first two innovation zones.
“In Bromont we already have a well-established ecosystem of companies and researchers, particularly around the C2MI innovation hub. You do a lot to bring researchers and organizations together. There are more than 300 companies specializing in intelligent electronic systems in the region,” said the Prime Minister.
In total, more than $255 million in investments are planned in the Innovation Zone, including $24.7 million from Quebec. Approximately $19.5 million is committed to C2MI, which drives innovation and research.
More than 73 million will be invested by Teledyne Dalsa. Aeponyx will invest $56 million.
Well kept secret
Normand Bourbonnais, CEO of the Technum Quebec innovation zone, speaks in the journal of “a too well-kept secret”.
“It’s been a well-kept secret for years. People were under the impression that electronics was a thing of the past and that everything was happening in Asia, but that’s not true,” he says of Bromont’s innovative core.
“The semiconductor capacity in America is going to quadruple in 10 years, so there’s a huge opportunity here for people in electronics,” he says.
For Claude Jean, CEO of C2MI, the contribution of the region will be significant.
“There’s a lot of semiconductor research going on in Quebec,” he concludes.
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