Corning Japan's Shizuoka glass substrate plant will be closed by the end of 2020

According to display daily, a foreign media report, Corning will idle its display glass substrate production line in Japan's Shizuoka plant later this year. Accordingly, the company will redeploy the production demand of this part of LCD glass to other glass substrate manufacturing plants in Corning.

From the market point of view, Corning stopped the operation of the display glass manufacturing plant, mainly to adapt to the current commercial environment of the display industry.

"Corning's decisions are driven by the changing business environment of the display industry. As we all know, the demand of Japanese panel manufacturers for glass substrates has gradually saturated or even declined. In addition, the demand for glass substrates from display panel manufacturers in other regions is growing, and they need our products and technical resources more, "said Thomas H. Lynch, general manager of CDT (Corning display technologies).

Lin stressed that the tough decision to close the Shizuoka plant was to keep Corning competitive. "Although Corning has always been firmly committed to the display industry in Japan and the continuous cooperation with corresponding customers, considering the current situation, we must also take some seemingly difficult strategies to maintain the company's sustainable competitiveness."

Corning will completely stop manufacturing in Shizuoka plant by the end of 2020, but some areas of the plant will continue to support the logistics and manufacturing departments of Corning display technology business group and Corning technology center located in the plant.

According to Corning, there are hundreds of employees in Shizuoka plant, but before the decision to close the plant, they have communicated with the employees and provided opportunities for internal transfer to other departments, including transfer to Corning's plant in Kunshi, or offer a voluntary resignation plan. After the closure of the Shizuoka plant, Corning has only 10 generations of glass production plants in Japan.

It is understood that Kangning, a Shizuoka factory, has a long history, at least more than 20 years. When it began to develop LCD panel industry in Taiwan, Kangning only set up a glass rear production line in Tainan in the early stage, but no furnace. At that time, the Shizuoka factory supplied glass to the Asian market. The plant was shut down in August 2009 due to a major earthquake in Japan and was put back into production in October 2011. However, with the decline of LCD industry in Japan, Corning gradually transferred its glass production to Yashan factory in South Korea in 2014