EXTREME TEMPERATURES and water contamination have seriously disrupted production at the giant computer chip manufacturer Intel in Leixlip, Co Kildare.
An Intel Ireland spokesman said the recent cold weather was a “unique situation” and had affected the company severely.
This was due in part to rapidly falling temperatures, which at one point reached as low as -12 degrees at the plant.
Water contamination caused additional problems for the company, which employs 4,200 people directly and indirectly and is the largest employer in Kildare. The US multinational makes computer chips which are used in 90 per cent of the world’s PCs.
There were concerns locally that ammonia and nitrates may have contaminated water after local authorities used an agricultural fertiliser to replace the salt component in grit on roads. This was due to a chronic shortage of rock salt.
Intel has its own pumping station on site and tests water for impurities, as extremely pure water is required for its manufacturing processes. However, it is not equipped to test for ammonia, and water samples had to be sent off-site for analysis.
A spike in ammonia levels was witnessed earlier this month, not long after urea was scattered on the road, the company said.
General water supplies were tested in a number of local authority areas, including Kildare. Although the levels of chemicals were within safe levels, Intel’s water quality requirements are more stringent.
“Clean from an Intel perspective is a level of purity that is unheard of anywhere in the country,” a spokesman for the firm said.
It is understood that production at its Fab-10 plant – an older plant that produces lower-end products such as flash memory – was shut down while the issue was resolved. A number of sources have confirmed the shutdown.
Fab-24, the companys flagship facility which produces the latest microprocessors, was not thought to have been affected by the incident. However, representatives for the company would not comment on production at the Leixlip plant.
The company brought tankers of water into the site as a contingency plan.
“Keeping production lines running is of paramount importance,” the company spokesman said.
The cost of the contingency plan has not yet been finalised. “Water levels are trending back down to normal,” the spokesman said.
Charlie Talbot, spokesman for Kildare County Council, said elevated levels of ammonia had been detected by Fingal County Council, which runs the water supply at the Leixlip reservoir, and corrective measures were taken.
He said the council had used urea on only one night, because it had damaged gritting equipment.
However, he said, it was more likely that the substance appeared in surface water rather than polluting the water table, and any effect would have been “limited”.
