South Korea's LG Electronics Inc said yesterday it is closing a plant that makes plasma display panels to cut costs and rejuvenate its business.
The company will stop producing flat panels at one of its four PDP plants in Gumi, 260km southeast of Seoul, said LG spokeswoman Judy Pae.
Pae said the shutdown is scheduled for the first half of this year.
"This move is to increase operational efficiency and to reduce costs" totaling US$22 million to US$32 million annually, LG Electronics said in a statement issued later.
"This is a part of LG's ongoing efforts to improve the performance of its plasma display panel business as a whole," the statement said.
LG Electronics is South Korea's largest consumer appliance manufacturer. Besides plasma displays, the company is also a major global producer of cell phone handsets.
The plant to be shut, named A1, is the oldest of the company's four and has an annual capacity of 840,000 42-inch plasma panels used in flat screen televisions, or 70,000 a month.
LG's total 42-inch plasma display module production capacity will decline to 360,000 units per month, or 4.32 million a year, with the loss of the A1 plant, the statement said.
LG Electronics lost 123 billion won (US$132.1 million) in the three months ended March 31. It recorded net profit of 150.8 billion won a year earlier.
The market for flat panels, including plasma and liquid crystal displays, has suffered amid oversupply and falling prices for the components.
LG competes with other plasma makers including South Korea's Samsung SDI Co and Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.
Samsung Electronics Co and South Korea's LG.Philips LCD Co are the world's two top manufacturers of liquid crystal displays.
The International Industrial Talents Education Special (INTENSE) Program to attract foreigners to study and work in Taiwan will provide scholarships and a living allowance of up to NT$440,000 per person for two years beginning in August, Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) told a meeting of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee yesterday. Pan was giving an update on the program’s implementation, a review of universities’ efforts to recruit international students and promotion of the Taiwan Huayu Bilingual Exchanges of Selected Talent (BEST) program. Each INTENSE Program student would be awarded a scholarship of up to NT$100,000 per year for up to
BASIC OPERATIONS: About half a dozen navy ships from both countries took part in the days-long exercise based on the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea An unpublicized joint military exercise between Taiwan and the US in the Pacific Ocean last month was carried out in accordance with an international code, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said yesterday. According to a Reuters report citing four unnamed sources, the two nations’ navies last month conducted joint drills in the Western Pacific. The drills were not made public at the time, but “about half-a-dozen navy ships from both sides, including frigates and supply and support vessels, participated in the days-long exercises,” Reuters reported, citing the sources. The drills were designed to practice “basic” operations such as communications, refueling and resupplies,
‘MONEY PIT’: The KMT’s more than NT$2 trillion infrastructure project proposals for eastern Taiwan lack professional input and financial transparency, the DPP said The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus yesterday said it would ask the Executive Yuan to raise a motion to oppose the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus’ infrastructure proposals and prepare to file for a constitutional interpretation if the KMT-dominated legislature forces their passage. The DPP caucus described the three infrastructure plans for transportation links to eastern Taiwan proposed by the KMT as “three money pit projects” that would cost more than NT$2 trillion (US$61.72 billion). It would ask the Executive Yuan to oppose public projects that would drain state financial resources, DPP caucus secretary-general Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) said. It would also file for
Singapore yesterday swore in Lawrence Wong (黃循財) as the city-state’s new prime minister in a ceremony broadcast live on television after Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) stepped down following two decades in office. Wong, formerly deputy prime minister, was inaugurated at the Istana government office shortly after 8pm to become the second person outside the Lee family to lead the nation. “I ... do solemnly swear that I will at all times faithfully discharge my duties as prime minister according to law, and to the best of my knowledge and ability, without fear or favor, affection or ill-will. So help me God,” the