Daeduck to focus on high value chip boards
Printed circuit board (PCB) maker Daeduck Electronics has liquidated its factory in the Philippines, TheElec has learned.
The factory had manufactured low value automotive boards. Daeduck is ending the business due to low profitability.
The company entered Philippines in the mid-1990s to save costs but is now calling it quits due to lack of infrastructure to support its projects there.
The Philippines factory recorded 36.5 billion won in sales and 4.9 billion won in net loss in 2019.
Daeduck will also no longer continue producing the products it made there at its other factories in Vietnam or South Korea.
Meanwhile, the company also sold its chemical affiliate Wimas to a Chinese company.
Daeduck's subsidiary and RF component firm Wisol owns 80% of Wimas. The company has deemed that there isn't much synergy between Wimas and the rest of its affiliates and has been planning to sell the company since last year.
Wimas produces photoacid generator and other chemicals that are used in semiconductor production.
This doesn't mix well with Daeduck's main productions such as semiconductor and telecommunication boards or Wisol's RF components.
Daeduck is currently focusing on semiconductor boards such as flip chip ball grid array (FC-BGA).
FC-BGA doesn't have wiring and is a high-end semiconductor board. It is used to send electric signals between the chip and the main board. Japan's Ibiden and Shinko Denki as well as Samsung Electro-Mechanics are powerhouses in FC-BGA __ only around ten companies manufacture the board.
Daeduck spent a total of 160 billion won so far in its FC-BGA business to expand production capacity.
Meanwhile, subsidiary Wisol has reduced its sales reliance on Samsung to under half of its total revenue.
It is supplying its components to all Chinese smartphone makers except Huawei.
This allowed Wisol to record growth during the first half despite most Samsung suppliers seeing their earnings tumble. The company recorded 182.4 billion won in sales and 7.6 billion won in operating income during the first half of the year, an increase of 19.3% and 86.5%, respectively, from a year ago.
Wisol's main product is SAW filters that filters specific frequencies that reach the phone. 5G smartphones require more of these filters as they need to process more spectrum. The company was acquired by Daeduck in 2017.
