Samsung in America: 11 factories, 10,000 jobs, 200 billion USD investment?

According to local media reports, Samsung is considering massive investments in the US. A new factory building in Taylor, Texas, may be followed by many more. There is talk of eleven factories that could bring more than 10,000 additional direct jobs. The amount of investment will be huge.

The first documents submitted to the state of Texas focused on expansion around the small town of Taylor, not far from Austin. According to this, nine industrial complexes will be possible in this phase, the area will be ten times as compared to the new building that is starting now. As of now, nearly USD 168 billion will be earmarked for this, and more than 8,000 employees will be required.

Austin will get two additional factories. Two factories and an additional 1,800 jobs will be created at a cost of US$24.5 billion, excluding suppliers as usual. Here too the number of employees is low by current standards. Current factories are projected with around 1,500 to nearly 2,000 employees, but increasing levels of automation could play a role here. Samsung employs 3,000 people directly at its current location in Austin, and another 7,000 employees, for example through subcontractors.

20 years of advance planning

The first big question, however, is when. It will begin as soon as the next decade, with plans going back 20 years. So the first of the new factories will not be ready before 2034, and two of them are not planned before 2042.

So Samsung weakens the documents submitted in a statement. Of course, there are currently no specific plans to build all these factories. But the early bird catches the worm in America, the key words being subsidies and tax breaks. The latter alone would directly mean US$4.8 billion for such a construction project if current laws and tax rates do not change.

Although Samsung will eventually implement only part of it, Texas is emerging as an IT hotspot in the US: TSMC, Texas Instruments, GlobalWafers, NXP, Applied Materials and other companies have major construction projects in the region.