Albany Business Review: GE director: Work has started on new
Utica chip plant
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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="407"]
Danielle Merfeld oversees more than 500 employees around the
world as the director for power electronics at GE Global
Research in Niskayuna, New York. Her division is part of the
push to build a silicon carbide manufacturing plant in Utica,
New York. (Donna Abbott-Vlahos / Albany Business
Review)[/caption]
Hiring has already started for General Electric's new chip plant in upstate New York, said Danielle Merfeld, director of GE's power electronics unit.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced last month that GE Global Research and the SUNY Polytechnic Institute will develop a power electronics facility to make silicon carbide chips in Utica.
The GE power electronics manufacturing facility was first announced at the Global Research center headquarters in Niskayuna last summer. The plan is to set up a manufacturing line at SUNY Poly in Utica by 2017. That line could produce about 30,000 chips a year — about 10 percent of the market, or $150 million a year.
"We're getting the equipment in now. We already ordered it, so they'll need people to set the equipment up and get it running and build the processes on the equipment both here [in Niskayuna] and in Utica," Merfeld said. "There's lots of opportunity for growth."