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| Samsung Display's Bac Ninh factory in Vietnam / Courtesy of Samsung Display |
By Baek Byung-yeul
Samsung Display will continue with plans to produce premium small-sized OLED panels for use in high-end flagship mobiles at its plant in Vietnam after employees who had come into contact with a coronavirus-infected worker all tested negative for COVID-19, the display-making unit of Samsung Electronics said Tuesday.
Samsung Display applied through quarantine procedures after a male employee at the factory in Bac Ninh province tested positive for COVID-19 on April 12. Also, the 221 employees who had come into contact with the worker all tested negative for the virus.
"The virus-infected employee works for a quality control department, so there has been no delay for the production line," a company official said.
As the company cleared the risk of mass infection and dispelled the concerns and uncertainties that its supply chain management would be disrupted, Samsung Display is expected to accelerate the upgrade of OLED module production lines at the Bac Ninh factory.
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| Samsung Display's Bac Ninh factory in Vietnam / Courtesy of Samsung Display |
Samsung's Vietnamese factory in the northern province of Bac Ninh is well-considered as a "key production base" as the facility brings more than 60 percent of the company's total sales, last year.
Samsung Display has been working on upgrading its existing production lines to produce flexible OLED displays and modules used for smartphones. The company has produced panels and modules for Samsung's foldable smartphones in its domestic plants, but it decided to upgrade the Vietnamese production lines to meet the growing demands for the various new smartphone form factors.
There had been concerns that its plan to upgrade production lines would be disrupted after the Vietnamese government prohibited the entry of all foreign nationals from March 22 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
However, according to the company and local Vietnamese media, nearly 300 engineers were allowed to enter Vietnam April 17 after receiving special entry permissions from the Vietnamese government. As Vietnam has been exempting Korean workers, though the lockdown will be continued until the end of April, 350 workers from Samsung Display and its partner firms arrived in Vietnam last month.
"The engineers who made their entry to Vietnam are working for upgrading production lines in Bac Ninh. The production lines will produce flexible OLED products used for smartphones released in the second half of this year," the Samsung Display official said.
Samsung Display recently announced it will suspend its LCD production lines in Korea and China until the end of 2020 as demand for LCD panels for TVs slowed and prices were falling due to a significant influx of Chinese rivals. Instead, the company is putting its focus on so-called next-generation display technologies such as QD-display and foldable OLEDs that are more profitable and require more technological advancements.
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