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View all search resultsGovt plans to develop silica industry across 10 industrial estates
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This photo taken on Dec. 25, 2024, shows semiconductor chip production at a factory in Binzhou, in eastern China's Shandong province. (AFP/-)
T
he government plans to establish 10 industrial estates that will function as the main building blocks for developing the downstream silica industry over the next 20 years.
The Industry Ministry has positioned silica, the key raw material for silicon used in the chip industry, as one of the economic drivers to reach the 8 percent gross domestic product growth target set by the current administration.
“Silica downstream development is not just about increasing [growth of the] national economy, but also about creating multiplier effects, like opening new jobs, pushing investment, as well as supporting self-sufficiency in food, energy and other related sectors,” Industry Minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita said in a press statement published on Sunday.
The statement outlines an industry road map from 2025 through 2045 that involves 10 industrial estates to support the sector’s development, but it does not detail whether those would all be new estates or include existing ones.
Silicon does not occur in nature in pure form but is mostly bound with oxygen as silica in quartz or quartzite and in silicate minerals.
The material is the precursor to silicon wafers, which are the building blocks of semiconductor chips and photovoltaic modules, more commonly known as solar panels.
Hence, its processing can serve two different manufacturing industries that lie at the center of technological progress and energy markets, respectively, around the globe.
