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Hints that Intel plans to reopen its Fab 20 chip manufacturing plant in Hillsboro could indicate that the company has broadened its strategy for operations in Oregon, said Mike Salsgiver, executive director of the Associated General Contractors Oregon-Columbia Chapter.

The company submitted notices of intent to the Department of Environmental Quality on Oct. 1 to construct a new boiler, three new wet scrubbers and a waste thermal treatment system at its D1C plant, near Fab 20. The work would include “the retrofit of the existing Fab 20 semiconductor wafer fab to align with existing high-volume manufacturing in D1C,” according to the filing.

The document had little detail about what work would be done on Fab 20 or how it would integrate with D1C, but the notion that it would gear the sites for “high-volume manufacturing” is something that could represent a change in how the company views its Oregon operations, said Salsgiver, who worked as a lobbyist for Intel from 1994 to 1999 and was a spokesman for the company from 1999 to 2000.

“The business model for Oregon is generally to do research and development here and to perfect, tweak and change things,” Salsgiver said. “Once a system is perfected, they do low-volume manufacturing here. But after that they crank things out to high-volume fabs all over the world.”

The letters and numbers that Intel uses for its fabs have deeper meaning. The “D” in D1C indicates that it is a development fab. Fabs with numbers after them are production facilities, Salsgiver said.

So if D1C became a true high-volume fab it would get a name change to a number. But it’s unclear what the “existing high-volume operations” are now at D1C and how they would change as the two sites integrate, he said.

So far, the company won’t confirm any plans for the site.

“Fab 20 as a facility is already integrated with D1C in many respects,” said Bill MacKenzie, a spokesman for Intel. “As for Fab 20’s future, we continue to review future options for Fab 20, but no firm decisions have been made at this time.”

In the past, the company has indicated that it would like to retool old fabs before building new ones, Salsgiver added.

The company two years ago announced plans to close Fab 20, and the site officially shut down in June after 14 years of operations.

“I was a little surprised when they said they were going to mothball it,” Salsgiver said. “It’s not all that old.”

Retooling the site for more production would require some reconfiguration of the space and the placement of tools, but that wouldn’t be all that difficult, he said.

“If they’re going to do that, and if that means more development and the evolution of high-volume manufacturing in Oregon, that’s good news for the state and the economy,” Salsgiver said.

In mid-October, Intel announced it would build a new research facility at the site called Fab D1X. As part of that announcement, company officials said Intel plans to spend between $6 billion and $8 billion on the new fab and to update its four other facilities at the Hillsboro site.