According to the bellows of the Korean media, LGD decided to set the investment direction of the P10 plant to the 10.5 OLED production line, and the production capacity will be increased from the current 30,000 to 45,000 per month, expanding by 50%. However, the LCD market is in poor condition. LGD will reduce profits, increase the financial surface variables, fear of affecting other investment projects in 2018. And large-scale OLED panel evaporation machine only YAS exclusive production, success or failure of the machine platform will become the key.
In July 2017, LGD decided to invest 20 trillion won (about US$18.5 billion) to develop its OLED business, including 5 trillion won for the P10 plant. Simply increasing the P10 capacity by 50% will inevitably increase the investment amount by about 2.5 trillion won.
In addition, the number of processes for coating OLEDs on substrates is larger than that of LCDs, and more machine equipments are needed, and LGD must also pay the original liquidated damages for LCD device purchases. In previous LGD procurement of LCD production equipment, Only backplane equipment can be shared with OLED process.
However, the profitability of LGD's LCD business has shrunk. In the first quarter of 2018, it hit a loss for the first time in six years. The operating deficit is close to 100 billion won. The operating profit of 2018 is also lowered from 5.5 trillion to 6 trillion won. At 4.5 trillion won, the source of funds for investment has been hidden.
The South Korean financial industry predicts that LGD will reduce the scale of other investment projects and give priority to the smooth implementation of the 10.5 line investment plan. LGD's planned investment plans include the 8th generation OLED production line in Guangzhou, China and the 6th generation OLED production line in Paju, South Korea. (E6) Recently, we also considered converting South Korea's 8-generation line LCD factory to OLED production line.
If the problem of funds is excluded, the production equipment is also a checkpoint. The evaporation machine is the key equipment for the performance of the OLED panel. The large-size OLED machine is exclusively supplied by South Korea's YAS. Three YAS steamers are used on the LGD South Korea 8th generation OLED production line (P9). Plating machine, the production line has achieved a stable high process yield, monthly production capacity of about 34,000.
Although YAS has a special 8-line machine technology, the 10.5-generation line equipment is the first challenge, and the problem of sagging in the middle of the board size will increase. The industry must solve this problem. Because OLED panels must have RGB organic materials in a vacuum state. Under high temperature heating, vapor deposition from bottom to top, if the middle part of the substrate sags, will cause RGB material can not be uniformly evaporated.
Informed sources said that YAS has overcome the technical problems of various 10.5-generation line machines and hopes to ship the LGD as soon as possible. LGD tentatively plans to launch the 10.5 OLED line in 2020. However, if the commercial time delay is delayed, it may also be delayed. After 2021.