Japan-based PCB maker Meiko Electronics has announced plans to make total investments of JPY50 billion (US$453.72 million) in 2021-2024 fiscal years, with the focus placed on expanding capacity for automotive PCB to meet robust demand for ADAS and electrical vehicle applications.
The company said it will build a new automotive PCB plant at Japan's Yamagata prefecture in fiscal 2022 (starting April 1 next year), which will boost its total capacity for high-end PCB products to triple the existing level.
Meiko continued it will also build a brand-new automotive PCB manufacturing plant in Vietnam over the next four fiscal years, in order to effectively diversify production bases apart from better exploring huge market potentials for automotive electronics.
The investment projects are expected to further boost Meiko's ratio of revenues from automotive applications, which has approached 50% recently, and are also meant to highlight the arrival of immense business opportunities for automotive applications long expected by Japan's PCB makers, according to industry sources.
Japan's PCB makers, gradually losing ground in the handset and other consumer electronics segments, have stepped up their deployments in the automotive and medical applications over the past three years, the sources said, but sluggish car sales worldwide kept their shipments in low gear until global car markets started picking up in late third quarter of 2020.
