Insider Only News Government Manufacturing & Distribution New Castle County

NCC approves $300K tax break for DuPont plant

July 27, 2023 |By Jacob Owens

First State Logistics Park DuPont semiconductor — Logistics Propperty Company of Chicago will now develop the First State Logistics Park in Glasgow. | PHOTO COURTESY OF D2 ORGANIZATION

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[caption id="attachment_216903" align="aligncenter" width="1073"] First State Logistics Park DuPont semiconductor tax break Delaware

DuPont has received state grants and a county tax break for a new manufacturing plant at the future First State Logistics Park in Glasgow, seen here at the top left. | PHOTO COURTESY OF LPC FIRST STATE[/caption] GLASGOW – The New Castle County Council approved on Tuesday a property tax exemption worth up to $300,000 for a new DuPont manufacturing plant. DuPont plans to invest $50 million in building a new production facility for its semiconductor supplies business in Glasgow, moving an existing workforce from a Newark business park. The DuPont Electronic & Industrial segment, the successor to the old Rohm & Haas Electronic Materials business, will lease a new 385,000-square-foot facility at the under-construction First State Logistics Park sited at 149 acres near the intersection of Old Cooch’s Bridge Road and Route 896. Once complete, DuPont would move its operations and 73 existing employees from a site in the Diamond State Industrial Park off Bellevue Road. Due to be completed in the first quarter of 2024, the production facility would be the first built by Chicago-based developer Logistics Property Company at the more than 1 million-square-foot logistics park that will also feature office and logistics space. DuPont has already secured a state jobs performance grant worth up to $65,550 to create 11 new jobs and a capital expenditure grant of more than $1.57 million to build the facility, for a total of $1.64 million. It will now also benefit from a five-year county property tax exemption capped at $300,000 – DuPont is still subject to school district taxes and county sewer fees. The county exemption could be voided if DuPont doesn’t finish construction of the plant, hire its targeted 11 employees by December 2025 or violates the terms of its state grant, according to the ordinance. “We are excited for the planned expansion of our semiconductor materials production facility in Glasgow. We continue to be committed to Delaware and appreciate the support of New Castle County and the State of Delaware to help grow our business, add and retain high-quality jobs and deliver sustainable innovations that meet the needs of our customers,” said Dan Turner, a DuPont spokesman. Jason Gonzalez, the senior manager for government affairs at DuPont, told the state’s Council on Development Finance that without the taxpayer-backed Strategic Fund grants to build and staff the new facility “it would not be competitive” with sites identified in Maryland. The company sought other Delaware sites but was hamstrung by a statewide shortage of ready-made industrial space, he added. The new plant will expand DuPont’s production of polishing discs used in the production of semiconductors, the tiny electrical chips integral to nearly all modern consumer, commercial and industrial products. Those chips got a domestic boost from the recent signing of the Biden administration’s $280 billion CHIPS Act, which invests in their onshoring from Asia and investments in associated research. In producing semiconductors, a silicon wafer base has multiple layers of circuitry placed upon it, and each layer must be polished to nano-specific qualifications. “That is absolutely critical to making these better and faster chips, and we have a lead position in the world,” said John Singer, vice president of integrated operations at DuPont. The new facility will have a state-of-the-art clean room where the polishing discs will be produced, and Singer noted that the 11 new jobs to be created would be high-skill manufacturing that wouldn’t require college degrees but would be well compensated.