Hitachi Cable to Expand High Performance Materials Business

Hitachi Cable tries to accelerate profit growth for sophisticated materials by focusing the resources on 4 products areas including tape automated bonding (TAB), compound semiconductor, auto parts and rolled copper products or alloyed copper strip and rolled copper foil. The firm expands the output capacity of TAB and auto parts at operations at home and abroad to meet growing demand. The firm establishes mass production system for gallium nitride substrate by March 2007. The firm tries to expand sales for alloyed copper strip to automobile connector and for rolled copper foil to lithium ion battery. The firm enjoys firm demand for TAB to chip on film for high precision liquid crystal and to micro ball grid array or ?BGA for memory keeping high level operations at Ibaraki plant and Kofu plant in fiscal 2004 and 2005. The firm expands the output mainly in Ibaraki plant increasing the monthly output to 1.5 times by September. The TAB output increases from current 50 million units per month in chip on film to 75 million units. The firm expands world market share of brake hose from current 15% to 20% in fiscal 2008-2009 through the expansion of the output capacity in Thailand, China and North America. The firm tries to expand the sales for automotive sensors, high voltage wiring harness for power supply parts of electric vehicle, automotive antenna products and magnet wire. The sophisticated materials unit posted 5 billion yen of consolidated operating profit with 151.9 billion yen of sales for the year to March 2006. The unit tries to expand the figures to 7 billion yen for operating profit and to 168 billion yen for sales by fiscal 2008 under the 3-year plan.