Others News
- Irico Group to build LCD substrate plant
Date: 19-Jan-2007 Sources: (Shenzhen Daily)
IRICO Group Corp. will invest 700 million yuan (US$89.74 million) to build a plant that makes glass substrates used in flat-panel televisions.
The plant in Xianyang, Shaanxi Province will have an annual production capacity of 750,000 square meters when it is completed in a year's time, said Dong Jun, a communications official at the firm, Thursday.
He added the company could invest a further 600 million yuan to expand the plant, depending on market demand.
State-owned Irico Group Corp.'s plant will make the glass substrate used in thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal displays ((TFT-LCDs). The Xianyang-based firm now makes color picture tubes used in cathode-ray tube televisions, which flat-screen TVs have increasingly displaced.
China has also been trying to develop more sophisticated technologies and manufacturing capabilities in a bid to cut its dependence on foreign know-how and expertise.
'The plant will break the monopoly of foreign enterprises and end China's history of relying on imported TFT-LCD glass (substrate),'said Lou Qinjian, a vice minister at the Ministry of Information Industry, Xinhua reported.
David Hsieh, a Taipei-based analyst at U.S. market research firm DisplaySearch, said Chinese TFT-LCD makers like SVA-NEC, a joint venture between Shanghai-based SVA (Group) Co. and Japan's NEC Corp., and BOE Technology Group Co. rely on glass imports from foreign companies like Corning Inc.
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