Intel has suspended several investments in Europe, including a $4.6bn chip fabrication plant in Poland, the Polish Press Agency reports.
Krzysztof Gawkowski, the country’s digital affairs minister, said the project would be delayed for two years.
The decision came after construction machinery arrived at the site near the western city of Wroclaw.
The minister said he had been informed of the decision by Intel’s chief executive Pat Gelsinger, who said his company was experiencing “global financial problems”.
Intel is presently halfway through a plan, announced last month, to cut its workforce by 15,000.
On Monday, Gelsinger issued a press release saying there had been “no shortage of rumours and speculation” about the state of the company since it announced a loss of $1.6bn in the second quarter.
He went on to outline a series of measures to cut costs by $10bn.
‘Largest in Polish history’
When the Santa Clara-based company announced its investment in June last year, it said the factory would provide 2,000 jobs and “help meet critical demand for assembly and test capacity that Intel anticipates by 2027”.
Then prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki described the plant as “the largest greenfield investment in the history of Poland”.
On 13 September, the European Commission cleared Warsaw’s application to provide €1.9bn in state aid to the project.
The Wroclaw plant was meant to be part of a production network in Europe, together with Intel’s existing Irish plant and another planned for the Saxon city of Magdeburg, which is also suspended for two years.
The company said this would set up “a first-of-its-kind, end-to-end leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing value chain in Europe”.
Despite the setback with Intel, Poland’s Ministry of Digital Affairs said the government was prepared to support more semiconductor investments in the future.
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