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[December 2006]
Yageo Ramps Up Ceramic Capacitor Production
Yageo Corporation (Hsin Tien, Taipei) has announced that in anticipation of strong customer demand for speciality MLCCs driven by the dynamic growth of 3C markets, the company will expand high capacitance and high voltage multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC) production by up to 62% within the next year.
In its move to strengthen core competence, Yageo has been focusing on improving product mix since 2005 with a view to growing its high capacitance and high voltage MLCC businesses. Currently, speciality MLCCs contribute to 40% of Yageo's turnover.
Yageo expects its production capacity of high capacitance MLCCs, now running at 3.3 billion pieces per annum, to surge by 276% to 12.4 billion pieces by the end of 2007. High capacitance MLCCs have generated up to 35% of Yageo's global sales in 2006.
David Huang, Yageo's CEO, said: "Yageo's strength in key dielectric material and thin film technologies coupled with high-precision, multi-laying and mass production expertise has positioned Yageo in the lead of X5R and Y5V product development".
Annual capacity of X5R products will multiply by 3.5 times next year with dielectric thickness of 1.2µm and above 800 layers. X5R MLCCs with dielectric thickness below 1µm and 1,000 layers are in the pipeline.
The annual capacity of Y5V products will escalate by 2.5 times in 2007 leveraging Yageo's mass production technology and Compostar's advanced process engineering. Shipment of Y5V high capacitance MLCCs in 2.2uF to 22uF already takes up one-third of total Y5V sales.
Yageo has also seen steady growth in its high voltage MLCC sales prompted by increasing customer demands for LCD and related applications. Successful introduction of the BME manufacturing process combined with effective product mix adjustment through the joint efforts of Yageo and Chipcera have resulted in improved yields and product quality. High voltage MLCCs capacity is scheduled to expand by 40% this year and another 20% in 2007.
Having obtained safety certificates from TUV in Europe and UL in the USA, Yageo expects to make further headway in the automobile and WLAN markets maximising the operational synergy from the Chipcera acquisition. Yageo also said it looked forward to expanding its existing market share of 15% to 25% next year making it the largest supplier of high voltage MLCCs in Asia.
Yageo MLCC production is based in Nan-Tzu at Kaohsiung, Suzhou and Dongguan in China, and in Compostar and Chipcera. The Dashe plant in Kaohaung
(Taiwan) will also play a key role in high capacitance MLCC production in 2007 after full conversion.www.yageo.com
ENDS