Taiwan believes in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) first European fab, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said on Tuesday, during a visit to the plant’s construction site in Dresden, Germany.
It is a project “Taiwan believes in as much as it believes in TSMC itself,” Tsai said during the visit after being welcomed by European Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (ESMC) president Christian Koitzsch at the construction site in “Silicon Saxony.”
Koitzsch and TSMC Europe general counsel Gunnar Thomas briefed Tsai before she met with Taiwanese engineers to learn about their progress on the fab’s construction and their daily lives in Germany.
Photo: Screen grab from former president Tsai Ing-wen’s Facebook page
Tsai also presented Taiwan-shaped pins to the engineers, encouraging them to “work hard overseas, but never forget Taiwan.”
ESMC is a joint venture between TSMC, Bosch, Infineon and NXP. The groundbreaking ceremony took place in August last year, and the plant is scheduled to begin operations in 2027.
The Dresden plant is TSMC’s first major investment in Europe and the largest semiconductor investment in the city’s history, Dresden Mayor Dirk Hilbert said.
The city government’s top priority is to ensure that administrative issues are handled smoothly and to prepare infrastructure — including power, water and transportation — for the plant’s launch, Hilbert said.
The plant is expected to create more than 5,000 jobs in the city, he said.
“We want every professional coming to Dresden from around the world to feel at home,” he added.
The city is cooperating closely with TSMC and ESMC to plan housing, schools and public transportation for incoming employees, to “make them feel the city’s hospitality and warmth from day one,” he said.
Dresden is also building Germany’s largest and most modern vocational school to train more than 2,000 electrical and electronic specialists, Hilbert said.
As the Silicon Saxony cluster — home to more than 500 companies and research institutes, such as Infineon, GlobalFoundries and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft — continues to expand, the demand for skilled workers is growing rapidly, he said.
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
A cold surge advisory was today issued for 18 cities and counties across Taiwan, with temperatures of below 10°C forecast during the day and into tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. New Taipei City, Taipei, Taoyuan and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties are expected to experience sustained temperatures of 10°C or lower, the CWA said. Temperatures are likely to temporarily drop below 10°C in most other areas, except Taitung, Pingtung, Penghu and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, CWA data showed. The cold weather is being caused by a strong continental cold air mass, combined with radiative cooling, a process in which heat escapes from
RSS