Corning has just hosted a grand opening ceremony for the company's new liquid crystal display glass substrate manufacturing facility in Beijing.
The plant, located in the Beijing Economic Technological Development Area, is the company's first TFT-LCD glass production facility on the China mainland. The opening continues Corning's trend of entering an LCD-producing region as local market demand expands. Corning currently has LCD glass facilities in the U.S., Japan, Korea and Taiwan.
Previously, Corning stated that it expects global demand for liquid crystal display glass to grow 25% to 30% in 2008, representing an increase of more than 450 million square feet of glass to about 2.2 billion square feet by year-end. While much of that growth is driven by the demand for LCD televisions, smaller applications like LCD monitors, notebooks, and portable devices are also strong factors in overall glass demand.