LGD won’t mass produce OLED from Guangzhou this year: sources

LG Display won’t be able to mass produce OLED panels for TVs from its Gen-8.5 plant in Guangzhou of China until January next year, according to industry sources on Dec. 6.

”A trial ahead of the mass production has begun,” said an official of a company that supplied equipment to the OLED production lines in Guangzhou.

The Guangzhou plant was completed in August this year, and originally, the display maker had sought to begin mass production within the first half of this year.

“There has been some changes in securing some of the necessary material,” said one official of LG Display. Back when LGD had built an LCD plant for the same size boards in Guangzhou, material suppliers were also launched at the same time in order to supply parts and materials for procedures such as for producing TFT.

Due to the existence of TFT-related material lines in Guangzhou, industry watchers believe LGD may be suffering from setbacks related to deposition technology. YAS, the South Korean company that supplied the deposition equipment, however, denied having any problems. “LGD has not contacted us about glitches,” said a YAS official.

YAS was the firm that also supplied equipment to the OLED lines at LG Display’s South Korean plants.

In the first quarter earnings announcement this year, LG Display CFO Seo Dong-hee said that the firm expects mass production to begin in the first half of this year, and that the shipment volume of OLED panels for TVs would exceed 4 million once MMG is applied. This year, LG Display is expected to ship up to 3.3 million OLED panels.

The Elec is South Korea’s No.1 tech news platform.