Sharp to build $1.7 billion LCD panel plant: paper
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Sharp Corp. (6753.T) is finalizing plans to invest about 200 billion yen ($1.7 billion) to build a new plant for large liquid crystal display (LCD) panels in Japan, the Asahi newspaper reported on Friday.
The paper said Sharp, the world's third-largest LCD TV maker after Sony Corp. (6758.T) and Samsung Electronics Co. (005930.KS), may start building the plant in Hyogo, western Japan, as early as the middle of this year and aims to begin mass-production in 2009.
It will be one of the company's biggest investments in a plant, the paper said.
"It is true that we have been considering building a new plant but no details have been decided," Sharp spokesman Hiroshi Takenami said, adding that the company had been saying it would need another factory and aimed to decide details by this summer.
The paper said Sharp plans to produce 40- to 60-inch panels, using efficiency-boosting 10th-generation glass substrates.
Sharp last year brought onstream the world's first plant that handles eighth-generation glass substrates, which can yield eight 40-inch-class panels -- up from three panels for the sixth-generation substrates used at its adjacent plant.
The company said on Wednesday corporate senior executive director Mikio Katayama, 49, would become president on April 1. Katayama, who has spent most of his career in the company's LCD business, is currently in charge of its TV-use LCD panels and audiovisual products including LCD TVs, DVD recorders and Blu-ray players.
Shares in Sharp fell 1.1 percent to 2,185 yen by 0033 GMT, in line with a 1.15 percent decline in the benchmark Nikkei average .N225.
