Danfoss is Really Here

SUNY Poly students might finally begin to see activity at Quad-C.

Danfoss, a Denmark-based company, has begun occupying Quad-C. Danfoss is a global technologies company, and Quad-C will become its 18th manufacturing facility worldwide, according to Mike Hennessey, the general manager for Danfoss who was a guest speaker at the recent SUNY Poly SGU meeting that took place in Quad-C on October 24th.

Quad-C will be operating exactly like Danfoss’ main semiconductor manufacturing facility in Germany. There are 50,000 square feet of clean rooms split between two rooms in Quad-C, which is double the space in the facility in Germany. Construction is still going on inside, as the facility wasn’t originally designed as a packaging plant, according to Hennessey. Certain sections of the building are being built in a more energy efficient way.

Danfoss is taking over Quad-C as part of a transatlantic collaboration with General Electric. Danfoss will be packaging semiconductors manufactured on the SUNY Poly Albany Campus. GE will be taking control of the first floor of the building, where it will dice the semiconductor wafers into individual chips; Danfoss will package them upstairs.

Danfoss currently employees over 24,000 people worldwide; the operations in Quad-C are said to add an additional 300 employees, according to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s announcement in March. Hennessey estimates Danfoss may be employing between 500-700 people over the next 10 years, once Quad-C is fully up-and-running.

According to Hennessey, Danfoss will also have internships for students eventually, although the timeline for if/when this will occur is unclear. Hennessey also stated that discussion has taken place on increased collaboration with SUNY Poly to allow students that are interested in nanoscience to learn more about how the facility works.

Danfoss wants to be fully up-and-running by October of 2018, and intends to move into the Quad-C facility sometime in January. The company has already employed 11 people. Those employees are in Germany right now, learning the exact process that Danfoss uses to package its semiconductors so they can bring that knowledge back to Utica.