Nitto Denko Announces 100 Billion Yen Opticals Investment, Tripling of LCD Optical Film Capacity.

Tokyo, Japan, Feb 1, 2006 - (JCN) - Leading Japanese diversified materials company Nitto Denko  Corporation announced plans February 1 to invest some 100 billion yen in boosting the company's production capacity of optical films for liquid crystal display (LCD) during Fiscal Year (FY) 2006.

As a result of the envisaged investment, Nitto Denko's production capacity for such film would increase to almost three times from the current 53 million sq.m., to 60 million sq. m. by March 2007, the company said.

The world's top-share manufacturer of optical films, Nitto Denko has been earlier planning to make an optical film-related capital investment totaling some 100 billion yen during the three years covering FY2005 through FY2007. However, under the latest scheme, Nitto Denko will be revising that investment upward to about 150 billion yen in the FY2005 and FY2006, alone.

In the background of the announcement this time has been the efforts by the company to meet the increasing demand for optical films for LCD television sets (LCD-TVs), by embarking upon constructing a new process wing at its Onomichi Plant in western Japan, expansion of plant facilities at Kameyama Plant located between Osaka and Nagoya, and expanding finishing process capacities in Korea, Taiwan and China.

However, growth in demand for the optical films in the large-sized LCD-TV application area has recently been more robust than anticipated earlier, and in addition, demand for LCD monitor and laptop PC applications have also seen upward revisions. In particular, LCD-TV panel manufacturers have also been revising their capex plans upward in response to the favorable demand and shifting of LCD-TVs to larger-screen models.

It is with such a backdrop that Nitto Denko has decided on moving up the on-stream timing of the construction projects and making the large-scale investment this time, based on its judgment that securing the necessary capacity through additional investment would be indispensable.

In addition to investing in capacity expansions and R&D mainly focusing on polarizer films and related materials in Japan, Nitto Denko is planning to continue investing in expansions of downstream polarizer processing lines in Taiwan, Korea and China.

Nitto Denko is also actively introducing solar power generators and rainwater recycling facilities at its Onomichi Plant in order to transform the Plant into a state-of-the-art environment-friendly production site. And in order to achieve a further effective use of water resources, the company will install a waste water recycling plant there.

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