Showa Denko has increased the production capacity for high-purity ammonia at its manufacturing subsidiary “Zhejiang Quzhou Juhua Showa Electronic Chemical Materials” located in Zhejiang Province, China, from 1,000 t/y to 2,000 t/y. The expanded facility started operation in January 2014.

Showa Denko, under the mid-term business plan PEGASUS Phase II, is reinforcing its earning power in the chemical segment including functional resin, chemical specialities, industrial gases and semiconductor material gases.

In concrete terms, Showa Denko has set a goal of sales at 150 billion yen operating profit and operating profit at 8 billion in 2015, up from the result of 136 billion yen and 4 billion yen respectively in 2013.

As for high-purity ammonia which is positioned as one of the growing business categories with an estimated market share of 30% in East Asia, SDK has decided this reinforcement of supply capacity to maintain the share considering further expansion of the market.

High-purity ammonia is used for liquid crystal panel and formation of nitride film of compound semiconductor (LED), and the demand for LED out of them is growing over the world for illumination or liquid crystal backlights. Particularly, the demand in the Chinese market is expanding for general illumination, landscape illumination or big screens.

The annual production capacity of the company in the three regions of Japan, Taiwan and China has reached 6000 tons with the enhancement at this time. The PR Office of SDK says, “High-purity semiconductor material gas is one of the important growth traction engines. We intend to keep enhancing our supply system positively to meet the expansion of the Asian market.