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Sharp’s Gen 10.5 Fab in Guangzhou Targets Mass Production in Oct.’19
August 20, 2018
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Hon Hai’s Sharp, and the city of Guangzhou, China officially launched the 1.5 Km2 ‘Display Industrial Park’ that is the home of Sharp’s new Gen 10.5 LCD fab and associated infrastructure.  The Gen 10.5 fab, which will have a raw capacity of 90,000 sheets/month when fully built out, was capped last month, along with the color filter fab, and the Corning glass facility is to be capped on October 15.  The construction of the TFT clean room was completed in July and the Nikon  exposure tool will be installed in February of 2019, leading to initial production in August 2019 and mass production by October 2019, but full capacity should reached in October, 2020.  When both phases are complete, the fab will have a raw capacity of 891,700m2 or 41% of Sharp’s total LCD capacity and ~34% of Gen 10+  LCD capacity worldwide, second only to BOE,although it will be passed by CSoT, when   their 2ndGen 10.5 fab is complete. 
 
The industrial park that was built to house the Sharp fab and the large number of upstream and downstream facilities, in the park and nearby, are expected to generate the equivalent of ~5% of Guangzhou’s GDP (2015), and while it is hard to give an accurate reference point as to the city’s actual (size, the population is estimated to be ~14.5m with an urban estimate of 11.5m.  The park is expected to generate $65b US when completed and the fab, which is expected to cost ~$8.9b, is could generate $14.5b in revenue when fully operational.
 
The progress Sharp is making could be a key reason why Hon Hai backed off its Gen 10.5 fab in Wisconsin.