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Vendors pursue contracts at GlobalFoundries

Caterers, cleaners and contractors among the companies competing for business at the chip fab

Friday, July 31, 2009

The Business Review ( Albany ) – by Pam Allen

Mike Kospa’s commercial cleaning business in Rensselaer wants a piece of GlobalFoundries.

So does Mazzone Management Group, Old Daley Inn Catering and Matthew Ernst from Advanced Cleanroom Microclean in Pennsylvania .

All four companies will pursue contracts at the company’s $4.2 billion Fab 2 chip plant planned for the Luther Forest Technology Campus in Malta . They are among the hundreds of companies that are expected to seek out work at the plant.

“It’s a touch early for us, but we plan to make contact with them fairly soon,” says Kospa, president of Environmental Services Systems LLC in Rensselaer .

The 250-person company provides commercial cleaning services for office buildings, industrial plants and shopping malls.

Advanced Cleanroom Microclean would open an office on the Luther Forest campus if the high-tech cleaning service secured a contract with GlobalFoundries, said Ernst, account manager for the company’s East Coast office in Schnecksville, near Allentown . The Santa Ana, Calif.-based company certifies, tests and disinfects cleanroom space.

A facility the size of GlobalFoundries’ 1.3 billion-square-foot manufacturing plant would require hiring and training about 100 local people, Ernst said.

In all, 1,400 people will work at the chip fab when it begins operations in 2012. Product suppliers and service companies could add another 5,000 to the region’s work force.

Angelo Mazzone, who owns Scotia-based Mazzone Management Group, has talked with officials from M+W Zander, the project’s manager, about providing pay-as-you-go cafeteria services for the 1,200 workers who will be employed on the site during the two-year construction period.

“We’re putting a proposal together. They want one within 30 days,” Mazzone said. His company catered a VIP dinner for GlobalFoundries at Prime at Saratoga National the night before the July 24 groundbreaking ceremony, and the reception held in the VIP tent the morning of the groundbreaking.

Mazzone Management’s five area restaurants and catering business employs 320 people.

The company, which owns the Glen Sanders Mansion , Angelo’s 677 Prime and three other restaurants, also wants to provide long-term cafeteria services once the plant opens.

Old Daley Inn Catering in Troy is chasing the same contracts. Co-owner Jim Pettit recently sent a letter of interest and a company profile to M+W Zander.

“We’re definitely trying to get a piece of that action,” Pettit said.

So far, more than a dozen local caterers inquired about providing food service at the project site, said Rick Whitney, president and CEO of M+W Zander U.S. Operations Inc.

“There’s a lot of interest,” he said.

Workers will have a half-hour for lunch, and that small window of time will prevent many of them from leaving the site.

Some of the first new permanent companies on the scene will be the large “tool” and equipment suppliers—ASML Holding NV of The Netherlands, Tokyo Electron and Applied Materials (Nasdaq: AMAT), for example—that will probably open offices in or near Luther Forest .

Most of the smaller equipment and service companies will start inquiring a year from now, or about a year before the tools are installed.

Soon after, a dozen “second-tier” companies providing metrology and data-collecting equipment, or equipment that is not related to production, will locate in or around the campus.

Metrology uses high-resolution devices in semiconductor manufacturing to measure the tiny elements in a chip.

Some service suppliers may consolidate operations here because the location is central to IBM Corp. (NYSE:IBM) plants in Vermont and Dutchess County , and to Intel Corp.’s (Nasdaq:INTC) three offices in Massachusetts , Whitney said.

Those services will include such niche operations as specialty gases, chemicals, and cleanroom equipment cleaning and repair.

“We think the quantity of services required will drive many companies to set up another office closer to the Capital Region,” Whitney said.

Between 130 and 150 construction agreements will be awarded over the life of the project, said Travis Bullard, GlobalFoundries spokesman. The first contract was awarded to The Delaney Group of Gloversville , the firm doing the site work on 100 acres of GlobalFoundries’ 223-acre parcel.

That work started in June.

Since then, GlobalFoundries has awarded a half-dozen contracts for concrete work and steel installation.

The first concrete work is scheduled for mid-September.

An invitation-only groundbreaking was held on July 24 inside an air conditioned tent on what will become GlobalFoundries’ parking lot. The event attracted more than 300 political and business leaders.

It’s expected to take up to 5.5 million labor hours to build the fabrication plant, 1 million of which will take place off-site.

A project labor agreement with the local trades requires that least 76 percent of the work at the site be performed by union labor.