A subsidiary of the German firm, Merck KGaA, said yesterday it has invested NT$460 million (US$13 million) in a liquid crystal display plant and intends to hire 35 new workers this year.
Merck Display Technologies Ltd said the new plant caps a decade-long investment spree in Taiwan worth NT$4.6 billion (US$131 million).
"Taiwan's LCD screen industry has grown at a fantastic rate ... so we had to invest here," said Thomas Lee (
LCD screens are used in products ranging from thin computer screens to mobile phones to TV sets that hang on the wall.
Last year, Taiwan accounted for 28 percent of global LCD panel output, while South Korea captured 47 percent of the market and Japan 24.8 percent, according to the Market Intelligence Center (市場情報中心), a division of the Institute for Information Industry (資策會).
The center predicted global output of LCD panels of all sizes will reach US$14.8 billion this year.
Merck Display opened a new facility that applies a necessary coating for flat-panel displays. The coating, called indium tin oxide (ITO), makes the panel electrically conductive and therefore able to manipulate the images on screen.
The new line is the company's third in Taiwan and its first focused on the color panel market. The other two are for monochrome products.
Merck Display's ITO coated glass is commonly used in small-sized color LCD display screens, such as those used in mobile phones and Palm Pilots.
Taiwan's LCD screen industry has attracted much attention over the past few months as computer makers switch from old, box-shaped CRT monitors to the sleek flat screens such as the ones that come with Apple's new iMac computer.
Merck Display's Lee said his company expected to recoup the money spent on its investment within three years. The firm currently exports 60 percent of its production to Europe, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and China. The remaining 40 percent is used by Taiwanese firms such as Picvue Electronics Ltd (
The new facility came online this month and expects to ramp up to full production by March. The new ITO coating line increases Merck Display's capacity by 170,000m2 for color flat panel displays.
The company's previous capacity on its two existing monochrome lines was 1.3 million square meters of ITO coated glass per year.
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