ZTE corporation of China has been shackled by the U.S. so that the U.S. can maintain its competitive advantage in 5G telecom; therefore, Taiwanese manufacturers understand the scenario and the importance of the 5G telecom market. The entire PCB industry system, from the upper-stream PI raw material factory to the medium-stream substrate factory and then to the lower-stream full factory, has increased their investment for expansion, one by one, in order to vie for the future 5G market opportunities.

 

 

      According to a report by cnYES, the primary PCB supply chain of Taiwanese manufacturers have made several large-scale capital expenditures this years. For example, to cope with 5G and thin-circuit substrates, the substrate factory of Flexium Interconnect has agreed to spend NT$9.4 billion of capital to invest in separately building a new factory in Kaohsiung and Kunshan of Jiangsu Province in order to expand productivity. AS for TUC upstream, it was recently learned that it plans to issue NT$1.5 billion of an unsecured convertible bond (CB) to raise funding so that the capital raised can be invested in CCL for high-end 5G telecom. 

   

 

        Furthermore, Career Technology, which is also a chain supplier of the substrate factory for Apple, has resorted to capital increase with cash to raise funding and has administered 76.84 million shares of capital increase with cash. As a whole, it has raised nearly NT$3 billion, which will be used to purchase a factory compound for operation.   

 

        On the other hand, Taimide, supplier of the upstream material PI (polyimide film) for substrates, has proceeded to the second phase of its factory expansion at Tungluo in Taiwan, with the capital expense of NT$1.74 billion. The output of the new factory can cope with future business and the development of new undertakings. Taimide indicates that the factory expansion will be completed by the end of this year and should be able to render output in the first half of 2019, which should be able to alleviate the current tight capacity of production. (Source of information: Liberal Times)