LG Display has started mass-production at its second OLED panel production plant, the company announced Thursday. The new plant, located in Guangzhou, China, has the capacity to initially produce 60,000 OLED sheets a month, which combined with LG’s existing plant in Paju, South Korea means that LG Display’s total OLED production capacity has almost doubled to 130,000 sheets monthly.
According to LG, the panels produced at its new plant will be used to create displays ranging in size from 48 to 77-inches. They’re for TVs, in other words. LG Display is a major supplier of OLED panels for TVs across the industry. 19 brands, including LG, Vizio, Sony, Panasonic, Hisense, Bang & Olufsen, and Toshiba, use LG Display OLED panels in their TVs according to FlatPanelsHD.
The opening of LG Display’s new plant comes as it and competitor Samsung Display are shifting their attention away from LCD panels, which the majority of TVs currently use. LG Display announced earlier this year that it is ending production of LCD TV panels in South Korea, Reuters reports, while Samsung Display said it was ending LCD display production in South Korea and China.
LG Display’s CEO, James Hoyoung Jeong, said he hoped the new plant will “enable more rapid adoption of OLED displays in the market.” He called large OLED displays an “essential growth engine” for LG Display. LG Display says that production capacity could increased to 90,000 sheets a month in the future at the new factory.
By 2021, LG Display has said it wants OLED panels to make up 50 percent of its revenue, up from around 30 percent in 2018, according to Reuters. Samsung Display, meanwhile, is pinning its hopes on quantum dot, with ZDNet reporting that its future QD displays will incorporate an OLED panel rather than the LCD layer used by its existing displays.
