Korean media: Beijing Municipal government to reduce BOE 8 generation OLED production line investment scale!

Now that basic work on the B16 plant has begun, Beijing has temporarily blocked it and ordered BOE to scale back its investment in the project.

On May 26, Korean media THEELEC published the latest news, which pointed out that BOE is currently struggling to invest in the construction of 8th generation OLED production line for IT use.

The reason is that BOE planned to invest 12.7 trillion won (about 67,679 billion won) to build an eighth-generation OLED production line at its B16 plant in Chongqing, Sichuan Province. However, due to the large investment scale of the production line, the local government has not yet approved the implementation of the investment is expected to be as early as next month.

But the new twist is that now that infrastructure work has begun on the B16 plant, Beijing is temporarily blocking it and demanding that BOE scale down its investment in the project.

According to THEELEC, BOE's planned production capacity of 30K substrate per month will cost 67.679 billion yuan (about 12.7 trillion won), more than three times the 4.1 trillion won (21.854 billion yuan) Samsung Electronics announced last month.

The industry is currently speculating whether BOE will use a Single Stack standard with one layer of light or a Two Stack Tandem standard with two layers of light, but even if both scenarios are considered, the investment of BOE is considered too large.

"Unlike Samsung's L8 production line, which shipped the eighth-generation OLED equipment for IT, BOE will have to build a new plant and invest a large amount of money, but 68 billion won is too much," industry sources said. That is why BOE's investment plan was not approved by the investment Executive Committee of the Beijing Municipal government.

Boe is currently considering the feasibility of reducing the investment scale of B16 from the original 68 billion yuan to less than 60 billion yuan, according to South Korean media. The company's OLED business is still in the red, which could affect Beijing's investment judgment.

In terms of the process of BOE's 8-generation OLED production line, all major South Korean equipment manufacturers have cooperated with BOE, but it is generally believed that BOE's progress will be slower than expected.

This is because it is difficult to build an eighth-generation OLED production line without avoiding the steaming machine made by Canon Tokki in Japan, and Korea can predict the progress of its production line based on BOE's purchase timing. If BOE were to ship the Canon Tokki vaporizer into B16 in early 2025, as previously planned, it would have to order the equipment within this year.

It's worth noting that BOE has never announced the exact timing of the investment in the B16 plant. Boe did not comment on the matter, and the authenticity of the report has yet to be verified.

According to public information, BOE currently has three dedicated OLED production lines, namely B7, B11 and B12, which are all six-generation lines. Each of the three production lines has a corresponding product structure and customers, among which the B7 and B11 production lines are supplying OLED screens to Apple.