TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) will launch plans for new fabs in Taiwan at the rate of one per year, Economics Minister Kuo Jyh-huei (郭智輝) said Wednesday (Nov. 20).

He was responding to questions by lawmakers voicing doubts about projects by the world’s largest contract chipmaker outside of Taiwan. TSMC has opened a plant in Japan and is working on factories in the US (Arizona) and Germany (Dresden).

Asked about a site for the company’s advanced 2-nanometer chips, Kuo emphasized that TSMC was not a charity, and would select a location based on the likelihood of making a profit, per Radio Taiwan International. If the US did not provide the right environment to base a profitable business, TSMC would not build a 2nm plant there, he said.

According to Kuo, the government had discussed how to provide the required amounts of power and water to the company’s projects, which showed TSMC might be building one plant per year in Taiwan over more than a decade. Work on a TSMC plant at the Nanzih Industrial Park in Kaohsiung started in 2022.

As for the Arizona project, the US had sent 700 engineers to Taiwan for training, while 500 to 600 Taiwanese engineers had traveled to America, Kuo said. He described the semiconductor production process as complicated and lacking standard operating procedures.