Sumitomo Chemical has released a business strategy statement for the information electronics chemistry department, and announced future development plans for polarizers, LCP (industrial liquid crystal polymer) thin-film materials, and the information electronics chemistry department. The company will increase the overall performance of polarizer products by more than 10%. To this end, the company will stop the operation of some production lines, reduce the proportion of general products in the entire business, and use internal basic materials to expand the sales of high-value-added products. In July of this year, Sumitomo Chemical also included a company that researches, develops, and manufactures polarizers, Sanlizi, to expand the use of polarizer materials in the automotive market.
In addition, Sumitomo Chemical regards liquid crystal polymer materials as part of the strengthening of the engineering plastics business, and actively explores the market of LCP for film applications in the 5G field. Sumitomo Chemical plans to use LCP to develop markets for smart phones suitable for 5G communications, multi-layer flexible printed circuit boards (FPC) and rigid substrates related to base stations.
Sumitomo Chemical said that the company mainly produces optical functional films, touch sensor panels and color photoresists for flat panel displays such as liquid crystals and OLEDs. At the same time, the company is one of the leading manufacturers of polarizers in LCD TVs and smartphones. Polarizers have a high market share. In the first quarter of fiscal 2019, Sumitomo Chemical ’s polarizer sales increased by 13.3 billion yen (approximately 840 million yuan) to 102.5 billion yen (approximately 6.47 billion yuan), a year-on-year increase of 14.9%.