Idaho’s semiconductor corridor is getting another major piece of industrial infrastructure. Air Liquide, the French industrial gas company, will spend more than $150 million to build and operate a new gas production facility in the state, The American Star News reported.
The facility, expected to come online in 2028, will produce ultra-pure nitrogen, oxygen and argon — industrial gases that advanced memory chip fabs consume in enormous, uninterrupted volumes. Air Liquide said the project supports the site expansion of a global leader in semiconductor memory chips, a customer it already supplies in Idaho.
For Idaho, the announcement means more than one plant. Chip fabs anchor a web of suppliers — gases, chemicals, equipment, construction, logistics — and each layer that locates in-state deepens the corridor’s pull on the next. Air Liquide’s previous Idaho investment, a $250 million facility announced in 2024, was built to supply Micron Technology, the Boise-based memory maker whose fab expansion is the largest semiconductor project in state history, according to The American Star News.
Patrick J. Wolf, PhD, an Idaho resident and executive director of the Institute for American Manufacturing & Technology, a 501(c)(3) policy and research institute, told The American Star News the investment strengthens both the state and the country.
“This is exactly the kind of investment Idaho should be winning,” Wolf said. “Every dollar spent producing critical materials on American soil makes our economy more durable and our supply chains harder to break. Idaho families benefit from the jobs and the tax base, and the country benefits from having more of what it needs made here at home.”
“Rebuilding domestic sources for the goods that matter most isn’t just good economics,” he added. “It’s how we secure and deepen America’s sovereignty. A nation that depends on rivals for the inputs to its most advanced industries isn’t fully in control of its own future.”
Construction and operation of industrial gas facilities typically bring both building-trades work and permanent technical jobs, and the plant adds to a run of supplier investments following the fab expansion in the Treasure Valley. The company did not disclose the plant’s exact location or job figures.
Source: The American Star News
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