Wingtech alleged to have transferred production techniques from Stockport plant
A Chinese technology company took trade secrets from Britain as part of plans to move microchip production out of the country, it has been claimed.
Wingtech transferred production techniques from a semiconductor plant in Stockport, Greater Manchester, owned by Dutch subsidiary Nexperia, according to reports in the Dutch media.
The Dutch government last month seized control of Nexperia from Wingtech using Cold War national security laws and relieved its chief executive, Xuezheng Zhang, of his duties.
China has, in return, blocked Nexperia’s Chinese operations from exporting chips, leading to a stand-off that has threatened to hit car production.
Wingtech appropriated techniques for manufacturing power chips known as Mosfets that are made in Nexperia’s Stockport facility, Dutch officials told the NRC newspaper.
Although the chips, which Nexperia sells to the car industry, are not at the cutting edge, the company’s Manchester plant has carefully refined manufacturing techniques to maximise efficiency.
Wingtech reportedly planned to use these techniques to shift production to a Chinese subsidiary, WSS, and close facilities in Europe.
The company said it had been transparent about WSS and Nexperia working together.
“The collaboration with WSS was a strategic business decision made by Nexperia within the context of the global semiconductor industry to enhance its technology platform and competitiveness, address capacity bottlenecks, and strengthen its supply chain layout,” a Wingtech spokesman said.
“The process was conducted with transparency and in full compliance with the company’s internal governance procedures and the support of external legal counsel.”
The company added that Mr Zhang had abstained from Nexperia director votes on WSS, due to his link to the Chinese company.
The Dutch ministry of economic affairs was approached for comment on the claims.
Vincent Karremans, the Dutch minister of economic affairs, has accused Mr Zhang of “improper transfer of production capacity, financial resources, and intellectual property rights to a foreign entity”.
“This posed risks of knowledge leakage and thus the loss of future production capacity,” he wrote in a letter to the Dutch parliament this month.
The stand-off over the company has threatened to halt production lines, echoing the global semiconductor crisis that gripped the car industry in 2021.
While Nexperia’s semiconductor wafers are manufactured in Manchester and Hamburg, most final assembly takes place in Dongguan in China.
The Dutch government seized control of Nexperia at the end of last month and replaced Mr Zhang with Stefan Tilger, the chief financial officer.
It said that Nexperia’s operations “were being compromised in an unacceptable manner … [which] raised broader concerns for the Dutch government about the availability of semiconductor products critical to the European industry”.
It came after the Trump administration threatened to impose export controls on Nexperia. Wingtech is already on the US entity list, which restricts it from acquiring US technology, but until September, its subsidiaries were not affected.
Nexperia’s Chinese staff have been told to ignore instructions from the Dutch parent.
Wingtech has said that Nexperia, which employs 1,080 staff in the UK, faces an “existential threat” if it remains under Dutch control.
A spokesman for Wingtech told the Financial Times that “any Nexperia-successor company is doomed to fail”, adding that “the customers simply won’t follow the new company”. (The Telegraph)