The oversupply of LED die still exists; however, the demand for LED lighting fixture is expected to achieve explosive growth in next year under the great support of lighting equipment factories in the mainland China, highly anticipated next year. Taiwan-based Lextar has officially completed one-stop production line in its mainland-based plant, Epistar also restarts its expansion plan. Epistar and Lextar are expected to start new LED epitaxy production capacity in the fourth quarter of this year, and volume shipments will be conducted in the first quarter next year.
Recently, Lextar has officially launched LED epitaxial expansion operations. At present, Lextar's one-stop production capacity is pyramid-shaped (production capacities of package and assembly are greater than that of LED epitaxy). It has more than 60 units of MOCVD machines for the production of LED epitaxy, which are configured in Taiwan, while its plant in mainland China Suzhou is mainly for midstream package and downstream modules, however, in response to the demand of LED lighting customers in mainland China, Lextar will officially starts the upstream LED epitaxy capacity in Suzhou plant.
Lextar pointed out that the high season is not obvious due to the slowing demand for LED backlighting in the second half of this year, but the mainland plant will also provide LED die production to meet the needs of lighting customers in the mainland. Because the mainland-based plant was ready for one-stop production and MOCVD equipments were booked, the MOCVD devices can put into use in short time. The mass production is expected to be conducted in the first quarter next year.
Epistar will expand the capacity of blue and green LED die through transferring investment to its Zhengyi technology, and it is expected to be put into mass production in 1Q of next year. Epistar noted that the supply of LED die in the overall market exceeds demand, but it still entrust part of orders to Zhengyi for production to meet the demand of customers, also it will add 10 billion NTD for this capital increase plan.
