Fujifilm India signs MoU with Gujarat for the semiconductor materials plant

In June 2026, Fujifilm India signed an MoU with the Gujarat government to explore setting up a semiconductor materials manufacturing facility in Dholera — the state-level framework ahead of the full ₹800 crore investment commitment announced at SEMICON India 2026 in September. The MoU positioned the SIR as a materials-supply hub for the Tata fab, with Fujifilm’s engagement spanning photoresists, specialty chemicals and polishing materials for chip manufacturing.

What happened

This entry documents the first step of a two-stage formalisation — and the two-stage structure is the analytically interesting part. A state-government MoU in June, followed by a specific investment commitment with a rupee figure in September, is how a global materials company actually lands in a new geography: first the framework agreement establishing intent, scope and site parameters; then the firm commitment once feasibility, land and incentive terms are settled.

Each step on the record makes the next one credible. By September’s SEMICON India event, the June framework had matured into a signed MoU between Fujifilm and Tata Electronics to develop a semiconductor materials ecosystem in Gujarat — with the ₹800 crore plant at Dholera to supply the fab directly.

The background

Fujifilm is one of the pivotal names in the materials half of the semiconductor industry — a company whose photoresist and process-chemistry portfolio sits inside essentially every advanced fab’s supply chain. Photoresist — the light-sensitive material through which every circuit pattern is transferred onto a wafer — is among the most demanding products ever industrialised: its formulations, purity and batch-to-batch consistency directly govern lithography yield, and its supply is concentrated among a handful of Japanese and global firms.

For India, the absence of such materials capacity has been the quiet gap in every fab plan: a country can build the factory, but if every gram of resist and every polishing slurry is imported, the supply chain’s weakest link sits at customs. Fujifilm choosing Dholera for a materials plant is therefore an ecosystem event — the beginning of localising the supply chain for India’s first commercial fab rather than merely supplying it from abroad.

The details

The product scope of the engagement sketches what the plant would do. Photoresists for lithography; specialty chemicals for cleaning, etching and processing steps; and polishing materials — the slurries and pads of chemical-mechanical planarisation, the process that renders each wafer layer atomically flat before the next. These are consumables: they are consumed continuously in production, which means a local plant creates permanent, recurring demand linkage with the fab — the stickiest form of industrial co-location.

The June MoU also fits a wider Gujarat-state pattern of sequencing industrial landings: the state signs the framework (this entry), the industrial partner engages the anchor tenant, and the formal investment lands at a national platform — SEMICON India 2026, where Tata Electronics signed 16 supply-chain MoUs with aggregate commitments exceeding ₹1 lakh crore and where Fujifilm’s ₹800 crore commitment was formally announced as part of the wave.

Within the supplier roster that formed around the fab through 2025–26 — Merck (September 2025), Sumitomo Chemical, Sojitz/NRS, Nagase–Nippon Express — Fujifilm’s progression from MoU to committed capital is the clearest demonstration of the pipeline working end-to-end.

Why it matters to Dholera:

The two-stage formalisation (state MoU, then investment commitment) is how large industrial landings happen — each step on the record makes the next one credible. The region’s archive deliberately separates MoU-class events from commitment-class events, and this entry exists precisely because the distinction, tracked honestly, became a demonstration: the framework of June 2026 is the reason the commitment of September 2026 deserved full confidence.

For Dholera’s economic identity, a committed materials plant adds a second industrial class to the semiconductor story: not just the fab and its equipment contractors, but process-chemistry manufacturing — an industry with its own workforce profile, its own safety and environmental disciplines, and its own export potential to other Asian fabs once qualified.

It also validates the vendor-park logic: with a 363-acre vendor park planned for ~450 suppliers adjacent to the fab, Fujifilm’s plant is the template for what such co-location looks like in practice — a materials maker within logistics reach of the line it feeds.

The bigger picture

June 2026 was a month of dual milestones — this MoU and the first aircraft landing at Dholera International Airport (27 June) — and both belonged to the same quarter that delivered the airport’s 80%-complete declaration and the data-centre policy anchoring at Dholera in July.

What came next: the September 2026 ₹800 crore investment announcement at SEMICON India 2026, covered in Ch. 20 — the semiconductor ecosystem and in our SEMICON India coverage.

Related chapter: Ch. 20 — Semiconductor & electronics ecosystem →