| Oct. 25, 2006 |
Construction of Additional Production Facility for PDP Photosensitive Paste Materials |
Toray Industries, Inc. today announced that it will build an additional production facility for photosensitive paste materials for plasma display panels (PDPs). The company plans to construct a new production facility for the pastes in the vicinity of its Shiga Plant (Otsu, Shiga prefecture) in order to meet the demand expected to be generated by a new PDP plant being built in Amagasaki, Hyogo prefecture by Matsushita PDP Company Ltd. (MPDP), Toray’s joint venture with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. The plant is the fourth one for MPDP and will be the world’s largest of its kind. The additional facility will have a production capacity of 205 tons a month, boosting the total annual capacity to 5,160 tons (430 tons per month) from the current 2,700 tons (225 tons per month). The first phase of operation of the new facility is scheduled to start in July 2007, followed by full-fledged operation in February 2008. The PDP market has been expanding on the back of the global trend towards digital high-definition broadcasting. The global demand for PDPs is estimated to grow to 30 million units per year in 2010 from the current 5.5 million units per year, and PDP television sets are expected to account for 15% of all television sets in 2010 compared with the current 4%. This growing trend is even more pronounced in large-sized television sets with screens 35-inch or bigger, as PDP screens are expected to maintain its dominant position due to their superior investment efficiency and price advantage. By region, North America is the biggest PDP market, followed by the strongly expanding European and Chinese markets. In Japan, the PDP television sets featured by high quality, large-sized screens are expected to get a boost from favorable factors such as terrestrial digital broadcasting that has become available throughout the country and the discontinuation of analogue broadcasting scheduled in 2011. Given such market trends, MPDP currently possesses a combined production capacity of 400,000 PDPs per month for the first and second plants in Ibaraki, Osaka prefecture and the third plant in Amagasaki, Hyogo prefecture (430,000 panels per month when the capacity of Panasonic Plasma Display (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. in Shanghai, China is included). To respond to the further expansion of the market, MPDP is moving ahead with the construction of the new plant (the fourth one) having the world’s largest production capacity of 500,000 panels per month, at the waterfront area of Amagasaki, Hyogo prefecture. Once the construction of the fourth plant is completed and it starts operating, the PDP production capacity of Matsushita Group will expand to 11.1 million units per year (in terms of 42-inch screens), further reinforcing its No. 1 position in the world. Toray worked on developing a manufacturing technology for rear panels, an essential component of PDPs, and succeeded in pioneering a unique rear panel production process based on a core technology called “photosensitive paste method in barrier ribs formation technologies.” The technology is currently licensed to MPDP. In this process, several types of “paste materials,” such as photosensitive barrier rib paste, are pasted on glass substrates to form fine patterns. Toray designed and developed these paste materials exclusively for this process by bringing together its advanced materials technologies and they are produced at a dedicated facility within the company’s Shiga Plant and are supplied exclusively to Matsushita Group. Under its midterm business strategies “Project Innovation Toray 2010 (IT-2010),” formulated in May 2006, Toray has identified information, telecommunications and electronics as important growth areas and aims to expand its business with focus on advanced materials. Toray is expanding and reinforcing its world-class “Advanced Materials” and “Global No.1” businesses to grow the IT-related products segment, which the company positions as a strategically expanding business. Going forward, Toray is committed to expand its advanced materials group by deepening and reinforcing its innovative technologies. |
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