International chemical Group Solvay and the Korean producer of micro-electronics Nepes announce today that their 50/50 joint venture Iridos is as from 2 August 2010 a fully integrated production company. Iridos was specialized in marketing and sales of pastes used in thin film transistor liquid crystal displays (TFT-LCD) and organic light emitting diodes (OLED) of the next generation.
Iridos’s activities encompass now R&D and production, next to marketing and sales. So far, since the founding of Iridos in 2009, R&D activities as well as production of pigments and pastes had still been in the hands of, respectively, Solvay and Nepes. The manufacturing of these products makes use of an extensive know how in nanotechnology.
Solvay's and Nepes's contribution to Iridos in terms of productive assets will exceed 20 billion South Korea Won (about 12 million EUR) over the years 2009-2011. Iridos's production assets will consist of a brand-new plant on Solvay’s site in Onsan, South Korea, to manufacture pigments, and of Nepes’s facility for pastes manufacturing on its site of Ochang, South Korea, which is being upgraded and expanded.
The worldwide market for TFT-LCD color pastes reaches about 300 billion KRW (200 million EUR). Until the establishment of Iridos, they were exclusively supplied by Japanese companies. Iridos will give the producers of TFT-LCDs and OLEDs the possibility to use the technology developed in Korea by Nepes and Solvay.
“By bringing its organic pigment and molecules know-how and nanotechnology to the joint venture, Solvay offers the LCD and OLED producers in the Far East an access to its high-tech chemical products that will enable them to develop the next generation of their micro-electronic devices”, says Paul Dandoy, General Manager of the SBU Advanced Functional Materials.
Nepes brings its dispersion technology for nanoparticles and its direct access to its customers to the joint venture. “We expect that a new business model can be created through the joint promotion of IT electronic material business, making the most of the strong-point of Nepes which has its prominent capabilities in developing various functional chemicals and promoting customer-oriented electronic materials business as well as the strong-point of Solvay which has plenty of fundamental and original chemical technologies”, says Byung-Koo Lee, Chief Executive Officer of Nepes.
NEPES is a leading Korean producer of semiconductor package and micro-electronic materials. Nepes has achieved outstanding steady growth since its establishment in 1990, realizing a consolidated turnover of KRW 272 billion in 2009. It is also remarked as a global semiconductor producer with its own subsidiary in Singapore since 2005. The company is headquartered in Seoul, Korea, and employs 900 people at its overall 12 plants. Nepes is listed on the KOSDAQ stock exchange (KOSDAQ: Nepes-033640) Details are provided at www.nepes.co.kr.
SOLVAY is an international industrial Group active in Chemistry. It offers a broad range of products and solutions that contribute to improving quality of life. The Group is headquartered in Brussels and employs about 19,000 people in 50 countries. In 2009, its consolidated sales amounted to EUR 8.5 billion. Solvay is listed on the NYSE Euronext stock exchange in Brussels (NYSE Euronext: SOLB.BE - Bloomberg: SOLB.BB - Reuters: SOLBt.BR). Details are available at www.solvay.com.
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