Unitech Invests NT$4 B. in Output Expansion for HDI Boards

Taipei, Dec. 15, 2011 (CENS)--To explore business opportunities generated by growing popularity of smartphones, Unitech Printed Circuit Board Corp., a Taiwanese PCB manufacturer, has invested NT$4 billion in building a new manufacturing base of HDI (high density integration) boards.

Driven by the emergence of smartphones and tablet PCs, demand for HDI boards has increased explosively, driving a couple of PCB manufacturers to boost their capacity of such components over the past few years.

As its existing HDI fabrication plant located in New Taipei City, northern Taiwan, has been running at full capacity for a time, Unitech has invested over NT$4 billion to build a new manufacturing base in Yilan County, northeastern Taiwan since late 2010, which occupies a land area of over 66,000 square meters.

So far, the company has completed the construction of two factories with total land area of over 18,800 square meters in the base. Following the first one, the second factory has already begun trial production now, confirmed the company.

Marching toward 50 nanometer technology in the development of integrated circuit design for smartphones, the company stated that the two factories will be dedicated to turning out four- and any-layer HDI boards to meet the trend, with total output of 2 million units per month.

At present, the company's monthly capacity of HDI boards is sufficient enough to produce 8 million smartphones. The capacity figure will grow to 10 million units after both the two factories start mass production, making the company the largest supplier of this kind in Taiwan.

Despite uncertain global economy, the company has kicked off construction of an office building in the base, which will be used to accommodate most of its staffers and office furnishings there in the future when completed. From another perspective, the company stressed, constructing the office building is also part of its output expansion plan, mainly because this will help to leave the second factory more available space for setting up production lines when ordinary staffers are transferred to the new building.

To fill the space, the company confirmed that it will introduce 40 more PCB drilling machines and 10 dual-axis laser plate drilling machines into the second factory, when the office building is completed, bringing the total numbers of the two kinds of machines employed in the base to a total of 105 and 34, respectively, in the future.