Sharp Breaks Ground on "anufacturing Complex for the 21st Century"
On December 1, 2007, Sharp held a groundbreaking ceremony in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, for what is being called a "Manufacturing Complex for the 21st Century. ESharp is aiming to make this a major industrial zone: in addition to horizontally deploying its proprietary thin-film technology for both cutting-edge LCD panel and solar cell plants, Sharp is inviting relevant infrastructure and material and equipment manufacturers to construct their plants on the site.
The LCD panel plant will be the first facility to use tenth-generation glass substrates (2,850 x 3,050 mm), the world's largest. The solar cell plant will have an annual production volume of 1,000 MW (one million kW) for thin-film solar cells.