NY approves USD 500 million grant for Cree

According to terms of the agreement reported by the Albany Business Review, Cree will be reimbursed USD 500 million after the company’s initial investment of USD 1 billion in the first six years of the project, contingent on the company meeting its goals. The plant, which could potentially have a 480,000 sq. ft. footprint, is expected to start production in 2022 and has already begun the hiring process. In addition to this grant, ESD has previously invested USD 110 million to bring the project to the stage it is at now, plus another USD 100 million on the Power Electronics Manufacturing Consortium at the SUNY Poly campus in Albany. That property, where Cree is residing temporarily until the new facility in Marcy is operational, allows the company to make use of its silicon carbide manufacturing line. In the story, ESD Chair Howard Zemsky was reported as saying, "It's a testimony to, frankly, the governor's commitment to invest the infrastructure that he did on that site, when we had no certainty of ever landing, in truth, a semiconductor plant to that facility. He went ahead and committed again another $100 million so that we shortened the amount of time it took from the time a company said they wanted to build a plant and the time that they could open the plant." Cree announced in September that due to incentives and support offered by New York and ESD, it had shifted its planned expansion from Durham, North Carolina to Marcy.