STRATACACHE Buys Old Computer Chip Plant In Oregon; Plans Next-Gen Display Facility

April 1, 2020 by Dave Haynes

STRATACACHE has bought an old computer chip facility south of Portland, OR with plans to revive it as a fab for its increasingly verticalized digital signage solutions business.

CEO Chris Riegel bought the old Hynix plant last week for $6.3 million. 

Hynix spent $1.5 billion to build and equip the 1.2-million-square-foot factory, which opened in 1998, reports Oregon Live. The plant “operated for a decade before closing permanently in 2008 during a downturn in the memory chip market. The closure left 1,400 people out of work, one of the biggest mass layoffs in Oregon history.”

The plant sold twice in the years after the closure, for $31 million and $13.4 million, but prior buyers abandoned plans to revive manufacturing on the site.

The property went up for auction again last week, but Riegel says it was too risky to go the auction route. He just went ahead and bought it. The last owner was Corning.

“We are in a dialogue with several different economic agencies throughout Oregon about our plans for this,” Andrea Poley, STRATACACHE’s manager of global communications, told Oregon Live.

Riegel told me by email this morning the plant has a huge Class 1 clean room and will be used to build what he called next-generation displays, starting in 2021.

STRATACACHE recently did a partnership deal with LCD manufacturing giant BOE, and would likely get the LCD cells for displays from that Chinese firm. The company already has a facility in Dayton, Ohio (HQ city) for outdoor displays intended mainly for QSR.