Siltronic

What they do

Siltronic makes the thin, mirror-polished discs of single-crystal silicon on which integrated circuits are built. It grows crystals from hyperpure polysilicon, slices them into wafers of 200 mm and 300 mm diameter, and polishes or coats them to tolerances measured in nanometres. It has four production sites: Burghausen and Freiberg in Germany, Singapore and Portland, Oregon. It reported sales of 1.35 billion euros in 2025 and employs about 4,300 people.

Why it matters

Siltronic describes itself as the only Western-based wafer manufacturer among the leading group; the company says around 75 per cent of the market is served by the top five producers. It has received supplier awards from Intel, Samsung, Micron and STMicroelectronics. Volume 300 mm production runs in Germany and Singapore, where Siltronic took majority control of a joint venture with Samsung in 2014.

Its strategic value was tested in 2020, when Taiwan's GlobalWafers agreed to buy it. The offer was raised to about 4.4 billion euros, but the deal lapsed in early 2022 because German regulatory clearance did not arrive in time.

The Singapore 300 mm fab, built from 2006 as a joint venture with Samsung and Singapore's first 300 mm ingot plant, has capacity of somewhat over 300,000 wafers a month; Samsung remains a key customer.

• 300 mm wafers, polished and epitaxial, for logic and memory.
• 200 mm wafers for power, analogue and sensor chips.

The German angle

Siltronic began in 1968 as Wacker-Chemitronic in Burghausen, drawing on Wacker's silicon research from 1953. It was a wholly owned Wacker subsidiary until its 2015 listing. In 2026 the ownership changed markedly: Wacker sold shares in May and September, reducing its stake from about 31 per cent to about 15 per cent, while Siltronic raised 273 million euros in new equity, with the Dutch investor HAL Trust as anchor shareholder.

Sources

• Siltronic: Investor presentation, September 2026
• Börsen-Zeitung: Bei Siltronic verschieben sich die Machtverhältnisse
• CHEManager: Wacker schließt Verkauf von Anteilen an Siltronic ab
• Wikipedia: Siltronic