"We're pretty excited about it, particularly for our community, as this business has the potential to be a major business and employ some big numbers," he said.
"This can only be good news and it's a success story, not only for Dannevirke but New Zealand. We've been in discussions for some time and for it to come to fruition is pleasing."
Mr Peterson said there was a huge world-wide market with growing potential.
"We've been working hard to make this happen and, ultimately, Oringi will be the site of our diffusion plant where the wafers, on which diodes (chips) are constructed, will be doped," he said. "This is a high-tech industry and the process requires a lot of heat, so it's delightful we've been able to join with Scanpower because we're going to be using a lot of power. We plan to have 50 furnaces in Dannevirke, using two megawatts of power. Our energy bill will be between $250,000 and $300,000 a month."
Mr Peterson said Oringi's old boning room was ideal for the company as the chips needed to be built in a clean room.
"When we walked in and saw it ...," he said. "There are 25 poles, originally set into the boning room to provide power and water to the machines delivering the same amount of power we need for our process."
New Zealand doesn't have a semi-conductor business and Mr Peterson said Intrepid's new plant was a golden opportunity for New Zealand to broaden its interest in a growing business.
"In 50 years, the semi-conductor business revenue has grown to US$348 billion ($430 billion). Compare that with Fonterra's business at $18 billion," he said. "If New Zealand is going to grow its economy it'll be in producing high-value products, everything produced here will be exported. There are no clients in New Zealand.
"Nowadays everyone's life is dominated by their cellphones, computers and mobile devices. In the United States, the semi-conductor business directly employs almost 250,000 people and invested US$34 billion in research and development last year."
The first shipment of components has arrived in New Zealand and engineers have begun assembling the plant in a space leased in the former CIT (Central Institute of Technology) in Upper Hutt.
Tararua District Mayor Roly Ellis said the arrival of Intrepid at Oringi was great for Dannevirke.
"I know Allan Benbow [chairman of the Scanpower board] and Lee Bettles [company chief executive] have put in a lot of hard work to bring this company to town," he said. "It's never an easy ride when you bring in something different, but Scanpower are doing it well. Hopefully this will be the start of a blossoming high-tech industry base here.
"It's fantastic news for our district."
And while Intrepid's Oringi site could be consuming up to $300,000 of energy a month, Mr Bettles said Scanpower, a community-owned lines company, would only receive 20 per cent of that.
"It'll be a while before that sort of scale is achieved, but this is another good international start-up business that has picked New Zealand and Dannevirke to invest in and it can only be good for employment," he said.
The development of the Oringi site had been the result of seven years of hard work, Mr Bettles said. "But, if by the end of this year we're basically fully occupied, then I consider that a great success."
