KLA Corporation Opens $138 Million R&D, Manufacturing Facility in Wales for Semiconductor Innovation

KLA Corporation (NASDAQ:KLAC) is one of the high profit margin stocks to buy now. Towards the end of May, KLA Corporation officially opened a new $138 million R&D and manufacturing facility in Newport, Wales, UK. This investment expands on KLA’s existing operations in the region and builds upon decades of semiconductor equipment innovation by SPTS Technologies, which is KLA’s Wales-based product division.

SPTS has been a key player in semiconductor equipment innovation in Wales since 1984, and has earned multiple Queen’s Awards for excellence in R&D and export. KLA acquired SPTS’s etch and deposition product lines in 2019. The new 237,000-square-foot Newport facility is designed to meet growing customer demand and strengthen KLA’s portfolio. It includes 25,000 square feet of R&D clean rooms and 35,000 square feet of state-of-the-art manufacturing space and tool demo areas.

The new facility can accommodate 750 employees and is expected to support the electronics ecosystem in Wales, which serves as a center of engineering and manufacturing excellence. KLA’s investment strengthens Wales’ globally renowned compound semiconductor cluster. The UK Government has also committed ~£5 million to develop the talent pipeline in the sector.

KLA Corporation (NASDAQ:KLAC) designs, manufactures, and markets process control, process-enabling, and yield management solutions for the semiconductor and related electronics industries.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.