Sharp Breaks Ground for LCD Manufacturing Complex

Osaka, Dec. 1 (Jiji Press)–Sharp Corp. on Saturday held a groundbreaking ceremony for a liquid crystal display manufacturing complex in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, that combines an LCD plant, a solar cell factory and manufacturing facilities of components suppliers.

The LCD plant, due to start operation by March 2010, takes up a space of 1.27 million square meters, about four times the size of Sharp’s current mainstay LCD plant in Kameyama, Mie Prefecture, southeast of Osaka.

The Sakai plant will be capable of producing LCD panels with screen sizes of 40 inches or larger.

The top Japanese LCD maker has also invited component makers to build their plants at the site in order to slash transportation costs.

So far, Toppan Printing Co. and Dai Nippon Printing Co. , both of which make color filters, as well as U.S. specialty glass maker Corning Inc. have decided to have production bases in the complex.

The solar cell plant, meanwhile, will have an annual output volume of one million kilowatts and will launch production by March 2010.

The construction of the plant comes at a time when Sharp is increasing its focus on supplying LCD panels to outside clients, instead of using them for its own television manufacturing, to better ride out the competition in the flat-panel TV market.END

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