Air Liquide China will build new production facilities in Mianyang City (100 km Northwest of Chengdu), Sichuan Province and Chongqing City. These will supply BOE, the world’s leading company in flat-panel displays and an IoT company, in the context of new long-term supply agreements. Since 2017, Air Liquide’s total investment for BOE amounts to more than 100 million euros.
Air Liquide will build, own and operate new high-purity nitrogen production facilities with a total capacity of 75,000 Nm3/h, for BOE’s production of AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) displays, a technology that is increasingly used in high-end smartphones. It will also provide volumes of oxygen, hydrogen, argon and carbon dioxide to BOE fabs in Chongqing and Mianyang. The facilities are expected to begin operations in 2021.
Leveraging Air Liquide’s most advanced technologies, and in line with its Climate Objectives, the new power-efficient nitrogen production facilities are expected to have a reduced power consumption by 10% compared to previous units, which is equivalent to avoiding CO2 emissions of over 8,000 tons per year.
Since the beginning of its partnership with BOE in 2004, Air Liquide has continued to build on this relationship, with the construction of carrier gas plants on 10 sites across China to support the gas and services requirements of BOE.
Francois Abrial, member of the Air Liquide Group’s Executive Committee supervising Asia-Pacific, said: “Air Liquide is pleased to strengthen its over 15-year long partnership with BOE, which testifies of our ability to provide unique technical expertise as well as safe and reliable service to our clients over the long term. Air Liquide is a provider of innovative solutions for the growing electronics industry, particularly in the context of world deployment of 5G networks. Thanks to these new production capacities, the Group will not only support a strategic customer, but will also contribute to the development of an industry which is well established in the southwest of China.”