Aju Business Daily

SEOUL -- LG Display, a major flat panel maker in South Korea, shrugged off a pessimistic business outlook to expanding its production capacity with the completion of a new plant in China, underscoring efforts to consolidate its global leadership in organic light-emitting diode technology.

LG Display held a ceremony on Thursday to complete the construction of a new joint venture plant for 8.5-generation OLED panels in Guangzhou, China. It was part of the company's total investment of 15 trillion won ($12.4 billion) by 2020 to expand facilities for large OLED and mid-sized plastic OLED (POLED) panels for smartphones and cars.

With its new plant in Guangzhou, LG Display is now capable of producing about 130,000 OLED panels per month including 70,000 from its plant in Paju north of Seoul.

The flat panel market has been hit by weak demands that have eroded LG Display's corporate earnings this year, but the company went ahead with an aggressive investment to boost its production capacity and increase its share in premium TV panels. In July, the company announced an investment of three trillion won in production facilities for large OLED panels.

LG Display's profitability fell sharply mainly due to a low-priced offensive by Chinese companies in the global LCD market, prompting the South Korean company to speed up its focus on OLED.