Motorola to Spend $10 Million, Hire in Irvine : Industry: Plant affected was purchased from Western Digital. Mayor hails the anouncement.

Motorola Inc. said Friday that it plans to hire additional employees and invest $10 million this year in a semiconductor chip factory it purchased from Western Digital Corp.

Company executives said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony that they would add only 15 workers to the plant’s 390-person staff this year. But in the next two years, Motorola expects to expand the staff to more than 500 people, said John Docherty, Motorola’s site manager of the plant.

“We’re going to make use of every square inch of this plant,” said Docherty, who is moving from Motorola’s plant in East Kilbride, Scotland, to Orange County. “This expansion will help the county.”

Last month, Motorola’s Phoenix-based Semiconductor Products Sector completed its purchase of the plant--arguably the most sophisticated factory in Orange County and the only chip factory built locally in the last decade--for $111 million. Motorola hired most of the Western Digital employees, except for 60 who continue to work at Irvine-based Western Digital.

The chip plant produces six-inch semiconductor wafers, which are platters of silicon circuitry that are cut into individual computer chips. The chips, which are the building blocks of all modern electronics, are packaged in plastic material and are assembled into working chips in Malaysia or Hong Kong.

Under a three-year agreement, the plant will continue to make computer chips for Western Digital’s products, such as disk drives and circuit boards. But Motorola intends to convert it into a high-volume factory, making chips for a vast array of electronic equipment, such as pagers, cellular phones, automobiles, computers and radios.

After the expansion in 1994, the plant will be able to make 2,500 wafers a week, said Gene Mullinnix, a manager with Motorola’s Microcontroller Technologies Group in Austin, Tex., the division that will be in charge of the plant’s production.

That compares to 1,800 wafers a week now. By 1996, Mullinnix said, the plant should be able to make 5,000 wafers a week. Once new equipment is added in 1995, Docherty said, the plant might begin hiring additional staff.

“We expect to spend tens of millions of dollars in the future here and begin staffing heavier in 1995,” said Gary Daniels, a Motorola senior vice president.

“This is important because it shows that California is serious about keeping the manufacturing base we have here,” said Irvine Mayor Michael Ward. “It’s not every day you welcome a $17-billion company to your city.”