Mexico latest to jump on the semiconductor bandwagonMexico latest to jump on the semiconductor bandwagon

President Claudia Sheinbaum unveiled plans for the Kutsari Semiconductor Design Centre late last week, according to government documents.

In the first phase it's all about R&D, with scientists and other technologists from higher education establishments coming together to create new semiconductor designs, Sheinbaum said. By 2027 the country aims to have consolidated its design capabilities and will be looking towards the manufacturing side, with the first factories due to come online in 2029 or 2030.

Project Kutsari – kutsari is the word for sand in the indigenous Purépecha language, incidentally – forms part of the broader Mexico Plan, unveiled by the president in January. It's a six-year plan geared towards economic development, domestic manufacturing and a reduction in imports from overseas, particularly China.

Amongst other things, the president will amend the Federal Law for the Protection of Industrial Property to accelerate the patent process for technological innovations and thereby allow for the commercialisation of patents, the government explained.

"This is a very good thing for the country. There is already a lot of research in Mexico, now what we are doing is putting all these minds together," Sheinbaum said, in a Spanish language statement.

The design phase is stage one, the director general of research institution Innovación Bienestar de México and newly-named national coordinator of Project Kutsari Edmundo Gutiérrez Domínguez, explained. The second link in the chain is the manufacturing element, followed by the third: the testing, encapsulation and assembly of the chips.

Mexico is far from being the first major global economy to seek out semiconductor sovereignty.

It's almost four years since the European Union disclosed that it aims to produce 20% of world's semiconductors by 2030 – in value terms – up from 10% at the time. The bloc is in the process of pouring tens of billions of euros into that ambition. The UK followed suit with its own semiconductor strategy, but a £1 billion investment pledge looked woefully inadequate, particularly with the US budgeting for a spend of US$52 billion in this area and China – the market to which many others are trying to reduce exposure – reportedly planning a spend of $143 billion over five years.

There's no big budget figure on the Mexican semiconductor plan. It will be supported by a combination of public and private investment, but that's all we really know at this stage.

But while the number of pesos will obviously have an impact on the overall scale and success of this plan, the noteworthy thing here is not a headline spending figure, but rather that this scheme is happening at all.

It is indicative of a growing global trend to get in on the semiconductors act. We all need them, be it for telecoms industry applications – from smartphones to data centres – or for use in myriad adjacent markets. And more of us want to make them, to avoid being held to ransom by those that dominate production.

That's a hot button issue for Mexico at present and one that resonates in many markets worldwide.