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Computer chips overtake coal, cigarettes
as the state’s leading export products
by Heather B. Hayes
for Virginia Business
April 2007
Virginia is officially a leader in
the New Economy. Figures released by the Virginia Economic
Development Partnership show that computer chips now
are the state’s No. 1 export, moving ahead of
Old-Economy staples such as coal and cigarettes.
Only two companies, Qimonda AG in Henrico County and Micron Technology Inc. in Manassas, make digital memory chips in Virginia. Yet they managed to sell chips worth more than $1.5 billion to overseas customers last year, nearly double the value of products shipped abroad by the coal industry ($883 million) and triple the value of cigarettes sold to foreign buyers ($511 million).
Digital memory chips are used to power computers, digital cameras, video game systems and cell phones.
The two semiconductor companies have been leapfrogging their way up the export product list since they built plants in Virginia in the late 1990s. In 2004, the chip industry ranked fourth on the export list with $400 million in export sales, still behind coal, cigarettes and stemmed/stripped tobacco. In 2005, chips surpassed cigarettes, shipping products worth $665 million overseas.
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