AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電), the nation’s second-biggest flat-panel maker, said the suspension of a land development plan by a local government had no imminent impact on its NT$400 billion (US$12.5 billion) investment to build next-generation panel plants and solar factories in central Taiwan.
The Taipei High Administrative Court ruled on Friday that the Administration of Central Taiwan Science Park should suspend its land development plan in Changhua County because of serious concerns about high risk of environmental pollution.
The ruling reversed the initial approval given by the Environmental Protection Administration.
“We are working on countermeasures now,” Yang Wen-ke (楊文科), director-general of the science park, said on the phone on Friday night.
AUO said it planned to spend NT$400 billion over the next decade on building two next-generation, or 11th-generation, LCD panel factories as well as two solar module plants in the affected areas of Changhua County.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs is reviewing this investment project before giving the go-ahead to the application AUO submitted in the middle of March to invest US$3 billion on building a 7.5-generation plant in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province, China.
“We can’t comment now,” company spokesperson Hsiao Ya-wen (蕭雅文) said by phone on Friday.
The panel maker said that it would be the company’s medium and long-term investment. It was now its priority to ramp up its first and second 8.5-generation plants, which it plans to use to cut 42-inch and 50-inch TV panels.
Except for AUO, more than 10 local tech firms’ long-term expansion plans in Changhua could be affected.
LCD panel maker Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (中華映管) and memory chipmaker Wibond Electronics Corp (華邦電) are two of them.
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