Panel prices may rise again! Corning announces second quarter price increase for glass substrates

Corning announced that Corning will moderately increase the price of glass substrates for displays in the second quarter of 2021.

Corning pointed out that the price adjustment of glass substrates is mainly affected by the shortage of glass substrates, the increase in logistics, energy, raw material prices, and other operating expenses. In addition, since 2020, the cost of precious metals required to maintain reliable glass substrate manufacturing has risen sharply. Although Corning tried to offset these increased costs by increasing productivity, it was still unable to fully offset these costs.

Corning expects that in the next few quarters, the supply of glass substrates will remain tight, but Corning will continue to cooperate with customers to increase the supply of glass substrates as much as possible.

Lin Zhi, chief analyst of Wit Display, pointed out that Corning mainly produces 8.5-generation glass substrates and 10.5-generation glass substrates, mainly for BOE, Rainbow Optoelectronics, Huike and other panel manufacturers. Therefore, Corning’s increase in the price of glass substrates will affect BOE, Rainbow Optoelectronics, Huike The price of KTV panels has promoted further price increases for TVs.

In fact, the price of glass substrates has already been on the rise. According to Jiwei.com, the glass substrate industry has been in a troubled period recently. The three major glass substrate manufacturers Corning, NEG, and AGC have continuously encountered failures, power outages, explosions and other accidents, bringing more problems to the liquid crystal panel industry that was originally turbulent in supply and demand. Certainty.

At the beginning of 2020, the epidemic spread globally and the LCD panel industry fell into a trough. Industry research institutions have lowered their expectations for the LCD panel market. Corning also postponed plans to start furnaces for the 10.5 generation glass substrate production lines in Wuhan and Guangzhou. When the LCD panel market improved in the second half of last year, the 10.5 generation line of BOE Wuhan and the 10.5 generation line of Supervision Sakai Guangzhou were limited due to the lack of sufficient glass substrates.

One wave has not settled and one wave has risen again. In September 2020, the price of LCD panels continued to rise, and the panel factory planned to further increase the volume of glass substrates. However, at this time, the furnace of Corning's Hefei 10.5 generation glass substrate production line failed again, which affected the production of BOE Hefei's 10.5 generation line.

The failure of Corning's furnace was not repaired, and accidents at the glass substrate factory occurred one after another. On December 11, 2020, a temporary power outage occurred at NEG Japan’s glass substrate plant, which caused damage to the feeder and triggered shutdown. LGD, BOE, AUO, CEC Panda and Huike glass substrate supply were all affected to varying degrees . On January 29, 2021, a furnace explosion occurred at AGC's Gumi Glass Substrate Plant in South Korea, which caused nine workers to be injured and delayed the shutdown of the furnace to change the line.

Due to the unstable supply of LCD panel and IC ,TSD always suggest customer to make the early order plan to avoid the shortage.please feel free to contact us for more supply information.

Source: Wit Display, Jiwei