Diversified US manufacturer 3M Co announced yesterday that its new brightness-enhancement film (BEF) plant in Tainan will enter volume production tomorrow, which is expected to help reduce costs for nearby manufacturers of backlight modules and flat panels.
BEF is a key component of liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) that increases the screens' brightness by improving the quality of light produced by the backlight module. 3M leads the sector with a market share of more than 80 percent.
"We are glad that the investment will help our local partners to further develop the flat-panel industry," Seah Long-seng (
The new plant, 3M Taiwan Optronics Corp, is located at the Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學園區) in Tainan. It is used to produce BEFs, dual BEFs, diffused reflective polarizer films and enhanced specular reflectors for various sizes of flat panels, including those used in LCD TVs and small handset displays.
For the first year of operation, the plant is expected to churn out 90,000m2 of film every month. The figure will increase to 200,000m2 per month next year, and 280,0002 per month in 2007.
3M plans to build another 200-ping factory next to the existing plant in 2007.
The two plants, along with personnel, equipment, research and development expenses, will cost the company about NT$1.2 billion (US$37.6 million), said Charles Chang (
Currently the new plant has 70 employees. 3M plans to hire 125 more by the end of the year, and another 370 by the end of next year, Chang said.
Setting up a BEF plant in the science park, which has a high concentration of LCD-related firms, has many advantages for 3M, such as the ability to deliver supplies to its local customers within 10 to 15 minutes, and to quickly adapt product consignments to customers' changing needs, Chang said.
The plant's proximity to its clients will also help reduce costs, which will enable 3M to cut prices as its capacity improves, Chang said. He refused to discuss the possible range of such price adjustments.
In addition to supplying local customers, Chang said, the company plans to meet surging demand in South Korea, Japan and China.
As most manufacturers of backlight modules have migrated to China, the factory in Tainan will focus on high-end products as well as research and development to create more value, he added.
Chen Chih-hao (陳志豪), an analyst at Capital Securities Corp (群益證券), said that 3M's investment can help develop the LCD supply chain in Taiwan, and benefit local major flat-panel makers such as AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) and Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子) with reduced costs.
BEFs account for about 8 percent of the cost of making a LCD computer monitor, and about 7.5 percent of the cost of a LCD TV, which means that cheaper BEFs will have a considerable impact on panel prices, Chen said.
Meanwhile, 3M can also look forward to the peak Christmas season ahead. Shipments of LCD panels in the fourth quarter are expected to jump by about 50 percent from the same period last year, according to Capital Securities' estimate.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day