DAP aims to increase radar board sales to Hyundai

Printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturer DAP is aiming to increase sales from radar board for automobiles by six times in 2021.

Last year, the companies is aiming to secure sales of around 14 billion won this year from the business, nearly six times more than its sales in 2020 of 2.5 billion won, a DAP spokesperson said.

The company is expecting sales from radar boards to steadily increase up to 2025.

DAP began supplying automobile radar boards to Hyundai Mobis in 2019. Hyundai Mobis uses the boards to manufacturer radars which are in turn supplied to Hyundai Motor. 

Hyundai had replaced a foreign board company, who was part of Bosch’s supply chain, with DAP as part of its plan to manufacture radar components locally.

DAP had begun developing radar boards back in 2017. Its rivals are BoardTek of Taiwan, TTM of the US and AT&S of Austria.

The Korean PCB manufacturer is seeing sales from its auto-component business, which includes radar boards, continue to rise. In 2019 the business recorded sales of 62 billion won. In 2020, this increased 40% to 90 billion won. The business accounted for 20% of its total sales in 2019 but this increased to 30% in 2020.

Last year, DAP became the largest supplier of high density interconnect PCB for smartphones to Samsung Electronics. The company, along with compatriot Korea Circuit, benefited from Samsung Electro-Mechanics exit of its PCB business in 2019. Korea Circuit is the larger supplier for premium boards to Samsung but DAP is ahead in overall board volume.

Thanks to this increased supply to Samsung, DAP recorded sales of 301.3 billion won and operating income of 8.2 billion won, a rise of 11.4% and 909.3%, respectively. 

The main board used in the Galaxy S21 series is supplied by DAP and Korea Circuit, as well as Ibiden of Japan.