Corning goes ahead with capacity upgrade

Corning Inc, the world's largest maker of glass substrates used in liquid-crystal displays (LCDs), said yesterday that it would go ahead with its capacity expansion as planned, adding that decisions by some flat-panel display manufacturers to defer construction of advanced plants would not hurt glass demand.

"Actually, we predicted this ... We've seen that flat-panel makers' expansion plans are beyond the volume the market can sustain. So the realignments will not affect us at all," said Eugene Verdon, president of Corning Display Technologies Taiwan, the US-based company's local affiliate.

Verdon made the remarks at a groundbreaking ceremony for the company's new facility in Taichung.

The US$750 million Taichung plant, Corning's second facility in Taiwan, is slated to begin initial production in the third quarter of next year.

The melting facility will supply glass substrates for 5.5G and 6G panel factories when completed.

Verdon said recent accumulations of LCD panel inventory have taken the pressure off glass suppliers, but "we still believe there's a shortage."

Seasonal demand in the fourth quarter and huge glass consumption from new customers such as Quanta Display Inc (廣輝電子) and InnoLux Display Corp (群創光電) backed up his confidence, Verdon said.

Corning's first facility, located in Tainan, will start running at full capacity in the middle of next year as scheduled, Verdon said.

The US company supplies glass substrates to more than 50 percent of the global demand and is a major supplier to Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子) for the latter's 5.5G plants in Tainan.

Looking forward, Corning said demand for glass in the LCD sector is expected to grow at an annual rate of 40 percent to 60 percent during the 2004-2006 period.

"Glass sheets are a pain to the industry because of the shortage in supply," Chen Mon-shen (陳茂盛), research manager of the semi-official Industrial Technology Research Institute's display department, said on the sidelines of a forum in Taipei yesterday.

Citing sluggish demand, Sharp Corp of Japan, LG Philips LCD Co of South Korea and AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) of Taiwan have all announced plans to push back construction schedules for next-generation factories used mostly for the manufacture of LCD televisions.

Their smaller Taiwanese competitor HannStar Display Corp (瀚宇彩晶) yesterday announced another postponement of capacity improvements "in reaction to disappointing purchases of pricey slim-screen TVs."

"We're putting off by three months the installation of equipment at our sixth-generation (6G) plant to the third quarter of 2005," HannStar financial executive Justin Chien (簡宏毅) said.

However, Quanta Display, a flat-screen manufacturing arm of Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), has announced that it will not slow its pace to ramp up production at a 6G factory in the third quarter of next year.

The fab is mostly for TVs measuring 32 inches or more.

"We expect orders will begin to recover in September before the peak season in the final quarter," Quanta Display vice president Tsai Chuan-chuan (蔡娟娟) said. "We'll stick to our original timetable."