ZEON Corporation (president: Naozumi Furukawa) has completed a brand new plant (Himi Manufacturing Division) that had been under construction since July 2006 to establish Toyama Plant of Optes Inc. (president: Noriaki Wakamatsu), a wholly owned subsidiary of ZEON Corporation, to meet the rapidly expanding applications of New ZEONOR Film® (stretched film products), which was originally released in October 2004, in the wake of the growing popularity of LCD TVs and the move toward larger models.

ZEON at the same time has decided to conduct investment Phases II and III to increase production capacity at Himi Manufacturing Division. The operation will start in fiscal year 2008.

The growing demand for large LCD TVs is expected to continue to expand at a brisk pace, and ZEON has been implementing phased capital investment in meeting this growing demand.

Investment has been completed at the existing Takaoka Manufacturing Division to increase production capacity for optical film rolls to 40 million m2 and for New ZEONOR Film® to 30 million m2 per year. Now, with the Himi Manufacturing Division, ZEON plans to increase production capacity for the New ZEONOR Film® to 75 million m2 per year.

Incremental capital investment is scheduled for Phases IV and V to increase production capacity of various optical films for large LCD TVs up to approximately 100 million m2 per year.

With the completion of construction of Himi Manufacturing Division of the Toyama Plant, the existing Takaoka Plant of Optes Inc. was renamed Takaoka Manufacturing Division of Toyama Plant.

1. Overview of the Himi Manufacturing Division


2. Outline of the capacity increase


Photograph of the plant