The outlook for 900 skilled manufacturing jobs at Freescale Semiconductor's East Kilbride plant looked ever more grim yesterday when it emerged that fellow US electronics giant Atmel had failed to find a buyer wishing to continue production at its Tyneside wafer-fabrication facility.

Atmel's plant, which will close in the first quarter of next year with the loss of all 600 jobs between now and then, had been up for sale since last December.

This sale has been handled by international real estate consultancy Colliers.

Freescale finally broke its public silence on its plans for East Kilbride on September 4 by revealing that it had appointed Colliers to market this Lanarkshire plant and a long-unused site it owns at Dunfermline. The Herald had revealed back on June 8 that Freescale planned to quit production at East Kilbride under a secret project named "Claymore".

Colliers had been trying to find a buyer for Atmel's North Tyneside facility which would have continued production at the plant and preserved employment.

It is attempting to do the same for Freescale's East Kilbride plant, a linchpin of Scotland's electronics sector which was established by Motorola in 1969.

However, in the end, Atmel has had to sell the equipment at its Tyneside plant to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, to be moved elsewhere, and the land and buildings to Highbridge Business Park.

Asked about the previous hope that the entire North Tyneside facility could be sold to a buyer which would continue production, a spokeswoman for Atmel in the US told The Herald yesterday: "The company looked at all those options, and that just wasn't a viable one. The company did work with outside advisers to find the best possible transaction for the employees, as well as the company."

She confirmed that Taiwan Semiconductor would take the manufacturing equipment from the North Tyneside site and ship it elsewhere.

Jimmy Farrelly, senior regional industrial organiser for trade union Unite in Scotland, described yesterday's news from Atmel as "a concern" in the context of venture capitalist-owned Freescale's East Kilbride plant. Unite, although not recognised officially by Freescale, has a large number of members at the East Kilbride plant and has been working closely with constituency MP Adam Ingram and MSP Andy Kerr in an effort to preserve jobs at the site.

The prospects of finding a buyer which would continue production at Freescale's plant at East Kilbride are viewed by the workforce, and even some parties involved with efforts to find a solution, as extremely slim. Global electronics companies have been shifting huge amounts of production to low-cost economies in Asia and Eastern Europe in recent times.

Asked whether Colliers had not been able to find a buyer to continue manufacturing at Atmel's Tyneside plant because of global electronics market conditions, the Atmel spokeswoman replied: "I wouldn't want to speculate on that."

However, the Atmel outcome is likely to add to the gloom over Freescale's plant at East Kilbride.

And, although Freescale plans to keep a research and development operation at East Kilbride, it is believed that the roughly 300 jobs said to form part of this could be much greater than the number which would remain after the company exited manufacturing at the site.

One source has indicated that the number of pure research and development posts, excluding roles which support the manufacturing operation at the site, might be closer to 100.

Sources have informed The Herald that Freescale has told employees that the East Kilbride plant, which produces embedded chips providing intelligence for products ranging from car engines to mobile phones, faces closure if no buyer interested in continuing production is found. Freescale's production at East Kilbride is expected to be transferred to the company's plant at Oakhill in its home state of Texas.

Some of these sources have claimed that Freescale's interest in pursuing a sale to a buyer interested in continuing production might be driven partly by hopes of limiting redundancy costs, if employees could be transferred to another company, and of passing on responsibility for any site remediation work.

The Dunfermline site being marketed along with East Kilbride by Freescale has never been occupied. It was earmarked initially for Hyundai of South Korea and then taken on by Motorola, from which Freescale was spun out in 2004.

Freescale was taken off the New York Stock Exchange late last year through a $17.6bn acquisition by venture capitalists Blackstone, Texas Pacific, Carlyle and Permira.

Atmel's North Tyneside managing director, Craig McInnes, said yesterday of his company's separate sales of the equipment and land and buildings at this site to Taiwan Semiconductor and Highbridge: "This has been a difficult decision to take, and is no reflection on the highly-valued work performed by our employees, here in Tyneside."

Steven Laub, Atmel's US-based president and chief executive officer, was more upbeat.

He said: "The sale of our North Tyneside facility is a major step forward in transitioning Atmel to a fab-lite manufacturing model, which will improve our cost structure and increase shareholder value."

Atmel, which had taken over the North Tyneside site from German company Siemens, emphasised that yesterday's announcement did not impact on its plant at East Kilbride, which employs around 150 people, or on its site at Bracknell in Berkshire.