BASF Venture Capital invests in Asia for the first time

Funding for Korean supplier to the display industry - Goal is to develop all-plastic displays

31-Oct-2003

BASF Venture Capital GmbH (BVC), Ludwigshafen, Germany, is investing in the Korean company I-Components (IC) Co. Ltd., headquartered near Seoul, South Korea. BVC is the largest investor and is providing venture capital totaling EUR2.5 million together with STIC Ventures, Seoul. Further details of the funding were not announced.

I-Components produces high-quality plastic films for a variety of applications in the electronics and automotive industries. The company supplies the Asian market with plastic films for mobile electronic devices (mobile phones, PDAs, laptops, digital cameras, touch screens, etc.) and is exploring novel applications for those films.

For example, IC is developing transparent plastic films with the aim to replace glass as the carrier material in liquid crystal displays (LCDs). These films have the advantage of being flexible, unbreakable and light. As a result, displays can be produced in a continuous "roll-to-roll" process. Moreover, rejects as a result of broken glass can be avoided. "This will lead to substantially lower production costs for the displays of the future. In addition, it will open up new possibilities for portable flat displays - for example cylinder-shaped roll-screens which are no larger than a pencil," explained Matthias Baum, investment manager at BVC. The entire market volume for LCDs is estimated to be worth $24 billion in 2003. The market will grow by 15 to 20 percent per year.

"By the combination of melt extrusion - one of our core competencies - and advanced coating technologies, we have developed the know-how to produce transparent plastic films for the display industry, said Yang Kook Kim, CEO of I-Components. "A precondition for using these films in displays is that the plastic material has high temperature resistance. Extruded Ultrason®, a polyethersulfone from BASF, is ideally suited for this application. Our innovative coating technologies enable additional film properties desired by the industry, such as barrier functions towards moisture and air."

"The investment by BVC and STIC will speed up the market implementation of these carrier films and enables IC to carry out the development close to its customers," explained Matthias Baum. "The goal is to launch the optical plastic films in the next two years."

https://www.chemeurope.com/en/news/30624/basf-venture-capital-invests-in-asia-for-the-first-time.html