en.Wedoany.com Reported - On July 13, South Korean printed circuit board manufacturer TLB announced its Vietnam expansion plan, which involves building a second semiconductor PCB factory near its existing production base in Bac Ninh Province, Vietnam, and installing new production lines covering major manufacturing processes. The project is expected to invest approximately 200 billion Korean won, equivalent to about $134 million, with construction slated to begin in the second half of 2026. The new capacity is expected to make a substantial contribution to the company's revenue starting from the first quarter of 2028.
The new factory will be built by TLB Vina, TLB's subsidiary in Vietnam, with a planned effective capacity of approximately 20,000 square meters per month. Currently, TLB's factories in Ansan, South Korea, and Vietnam have a combined nominal annual capacity of about 348,000 square meters. However, as the proportion of products using build-up via technology increases, processing times for steps such as drilling, electroplating, and circuit formation have extended, creating bottlenecks in some processes. The actual effective output of existing facilities is approximately 20,000 square meters per month. After the second factory becomes operational, the company expects its overall effective monthly production to increase to about 40,000 square meters.
Compared to the first Vietnam factory, which primarily handles partial transfer processes, the new plant will establish a more complete PCB production system. Planned processes include raw material preparation, lamination, mechanical and laser drilling, copper electroplating, circuit pattern formation, surface treatment, solder mask printing, finished product inspection, and packaging. This will enable the Vietnam base to transition from segmented processing to a near-full manufacturing process.
Production equipment is expected to be installed sequentially from the fourth quarter of 2026 to the second quarter of 2027, involving CNC drilling machines, laser drilling equipment, copper electroplating systems, circuit pattern processing equipment, surface treatment lines, solder mask printing equipment, lamination systems, and factory automation equipment. Approximately 133.09 billion Korean won of the construction funds will come from the company's rights offering proceeds, while the remaining approximately 66.91 billion Korean won is planned to be covered by existing cash and new borrowings. The project scale and implementation pace may still be adjusted based on construction progress, equipment procurement costs, and market demand.
South Korea's TLB primarily manufactures PCBs for memory modules and solid-state drives, with customers including Samsung Electronics of South Korea, SK Hynix of South Korea, and Micron Technology of the United States. As artificial intelligence servers increase the usage of high-bandwidth memory, DDR5 RDIMMs, and other high-performance memory modules, memory module PCBs need to support higher data transfer rates and more complex circuit structures, placing higher demands on multilayer boards, fine lines, and high-density interconnect capabilities.
The company also expects that after Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform advances, demand for PCBs for SoCAMM2 memory modules will increase. DDR6 and storage products based on the high-speed interconnect standard CXL will also generate new manufacturing demand. Therefore, the second factory in Bac Ninh will primarily handle high-performance PCBs required for AI servers and next-generation storage devices, rather than ordinary consumer electronics circuit boards.
Currently, the project is in the construction preparation and funding implementation stage, and has not yet entered factory construction or equipment installation. Public information has not disclosed the new factory's building area, clean production area scale, construction contractor, or specific production start month. Therefore, the project should be described as South Korea's TLB having confirmed the construction plan and arranged production line investment, and cannot be written as if the factory has already started construction or formed new capacity.
