Digital signage company Stratacache is bringing the Eugene, Ore. computer chip factory back to life, Riegel confirmed, with plans to build micro LEDs -- light-emitting diodes -- that can be fitted to smaller consumer and cutting-edge products and even wearable devices.
It will be first visual display factory in the United States at this scale in many years, Riegel said in an interview Monday.
“If you talk to someone in the Air Force, as an example, you don’t want the latest and greatest F-35 to have a visual display in it that says, ‘Made in China,‘” the CEO said.
“With micro-LEDs, we’re doing that in nanometers, so millionths of a meter,” he said. “So we’re building emitters, diodes there that are smaller in size than the coronavirus, as an example.”
Creation of that product and its expected accompanying growth should help the Dayton area, as well, where Stratacache has its headquarters and more than 300 employees, about a third of its total global workforce.
“We still have 300-plus employees here in Dayton,” Riegel said. “That will just increase with this. So it should be all good for Dayton.”
Riegel contends that the display technology possible here is “absolutely groundbreaking” and will help fuel the company’s future growth in revenue.
“There are all sorts of applications,” Riegel said. “It’s by far the next wave.”
The technology is also efficient, he added. Imagine a cell phone that can run for “two weeks” without a charge instead of ten hours, he said.
More than 100 workers will initially slowly ramp up production at the Eugene factory, the Oregonian newspaper said.
The goal is to get production going with “several hundred” workers, the newspaper said.
Stratacache makes digital signs, monitors and customer-facing technology for business customers around the world. Its main customers include banks and restaurants. The company is based in downtown Dayton’s Stratacache Tower.
Earlier stories from media outlets said the former computer chip facility south of Portland which Stratacache bought is an old Hynix plant. The plant operated for a decade before closing permanently in 2008, putting 1,400 people out of work at the time, one of the biggest mass layoffs in Oregon history, the Sixteen-Nine digital signage newsletter said.
Let talk about @STRATACACHE for minute -- specifically, the things the company is doing in Trotwood. It's an amazing story.
— Thomas Gnau (@ThomasGnau) August 31, 2018
Before the pandemic, Stratacache had about 320 Dayton-area employees and more than 1,000 worldwide.
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