Touching Base
Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong visited China for the first time in three years. Specifically, he visited Tianjin, which is home to Samsung Group’s electronics affiliates, to check their local business operations. Tianjin has a Samsung Electro-Mechanics multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) and camera module production plant. It also hosts Samsung Display’s plant for organic light emitting diode (OLED) modules for smartphones.
According to the business world on March 26, Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong visited Samsung Electro-Mechanics’ place of business located in Tianjin, China on March 24 and inspected the electric MLCC plant that started operation in 2021. Chairman Lee’s visit to a Chinese business site is the first in three years since his visit to Samsung Electronics’ Xian semiconductor plant in Shanxi Province China in May 2020.
MLCCs are a key component that constantly supplies the amount of power supplied to semiconductors and is widely used in electronic products. Samsung Electro-Mechanics built Tianjin MLCC Plant 2 in 2018 to respond to the rapidly growing automotive MLCC market along with the development of electric vehicle and autonomous driving technologies. The global automotive MLCC market is expected to continue growing by nearly 40 percent annually, from US$2.9 billion this year to US$4 billion in 2026.
Samsung plans to foster Busan as an MLCC-specialized area that leads R&D and production of core materials for MLCCs while operating the Tianjin plant as the main production base for MLCCs for electric vehicles.