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TCL Gets Financial Help from Guangdong Province for Gen 11 Fab
August 06, 2018 
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TCLannounced that it formed a joint venture with the Guangdong Province Investment Fund to finance and operate CSoT’s two gen 11 display fabs.  TCL is contributing $1.375b while the province is contributing $292m with the expected total spend for the two fab project to be $13b. The first of the two fabs has been constructed and is in the process of equipment installation and work for the second fab is underway.  The first lines should be opened in 2Q 2019 with the final phase of the 2nd fab opened in March 2022. Each fab is targeted for 45,000 substrates/month. CSoT indicates the fabs will be mixed use, with 20,000 substrates/month will be used for large panel OLED production with the remainder for LCD panels. The OLEDs will use an RGBW with color filter approach until IJP and soluble material are commercially viable, which they put at 3-5 years.
 
Chinese panel producer BOE has begun shipping both 65” and 75” TV panels from its recently opened Gen 10.5 fab in Hefei.  They claim to have ‘reached cooperation’ with many brand customers’ and are shipping currently.  The Hefei fab, when fully built out is expected to have a capacity of 120,000 sheets (90,000 and 30,000 for phase 1 and 2 respectively), which would come to a total capacity of 11.5m 65” TV panels or 8.64m 75” panels.  With the addition of some shared Gen 10.5 capacity from their Wuhan fab (expected in late 2019), BOE would be on track to be producing at a run rate of over 20m 65” panels/year.  Applying yields and utilization rates those volume would be lower. But typically large are LCD yields are >90%, while utilization is ~85%, so the figure of merit for the reduction in panels would be ~77%. BOE has made no comments regarding the split between LCD and OLED panels, but they are engaged in printing R&D.
 
BOE continues to build out its Chengdu Gen 6 flexible OLED fab, with phase 1 completed (16,000 sheets/month) and the 2nd phase equipment moved in.  By the end of 2019, both phase 1 and 2 should be running at or near full capacity. As we have previously reported BOE is running the current 6thGen OLED fab, way under capacity, having shipped only 1.7m panels in the 1sthalf.