Nippon Mining & Metals’ Electronic Materials Output Recovers

Nippon Mining & Metals improves the operation rate for electric materials including sputtering target material. The Isohara plant in Ibaraki operates at full capacity for indium tin oxide for sputtering target material of liquid crystal panel and platinum group metals target materials for hard disc. The Shirogane plant in Ibaraki and Philippine copper foil operation also recovered 80% utilization compared with the peak in first half of 2008. The Kurami plant in Kanagawa is recovering 90% of the peak operation in July.

The electronic materials order receipt plunged due to major production cut by the users including appliances makers and automakers and inventory adjustment. The Kurami plant decreased the production to 700 tonnes per month in early 2009, which represented 20% of the peak in first half of 2008.

The world largest sputtering target plant of Isohara also experienced 2-3 days per month of outage. Nippon Mining & Metals tried to reduce output at all 3 plants for electronic materials. However, the production started to improve since April due to higher appliances demand in China due to stimulus package.

The Isohara plant operates ITO target production line at more than 40 tonnes per month, which is higher than past peak level. The platinum group metals target materials production is also full capacity operation.

The Kurami plant’s rolled copper production was also improved since April. The production will reach 3,200 tonnes in July compared with 2,500 tonnes in May and 2,900 tonnes in June.

However, target materials production for semiconductor is still slow at the Isohara plant. The production is 70-80% of the peak due to slower demand for large scale integration.