15 February 2017

Monocrystal increases sapphire shipments by 18% in 2016

Monocrystal Inc of Stavropol, Russia (part of diversified industrial holding Energomera), which manufactures large-diameter sapphire substrates and cores for LED, optical product and RFIC applications (as well as screen printing metallization pastes for solar cells) says that its shipments into the sapphire segment in 2016 were up by 18% year-on-year, yielding a dominant share of 33% of the sapphire market for LED applications. However, sapphire revenue was $56.8m, down 18% on 2015 due to the average sales price declining through 2016 by 23% for wafers for LEDs and by 38% for sapphire ingots.

Monocrystal says that it has secured several long-term orders totaling $21m and become a serial supplier of polished wafers for three tier-1 Asian customers.

Full-year revenue from photovoltaic (PV) paste operations totaled $21.2m, up 5% year-on-year as a result of higher order amounts from customers. Consolidated shipment volume reached 2105 tons (a record for the business unit). Monocrystal was also qualified at three out of the top 10 solar cell makers and has begun serial shipments to them.

"2016 was another year of rapid growth for our share of the global market for sapphire components for electronic applications," notes CEO Oleg Kachalov. "For the first time in our history we have exceeded the 30% market share milestone, while providing our customers with the highest level of quality and demonstrating the fastest cost-reduction rates in the industry," he reckons. "One of the key factors in achieving this result was the increased percentage of large-diameter crystals in our production, which allowed us to cut down our manufacturing costs by more than 20%."

See related items:

Monocrystal ships 5 millionth 4"-equivalent sapphire wafer

Monocrystal gains investment from Russia's Bank for Development VEB

Monocrystal to double sapphire polishing capacity in 2016

Tags: Monocrystal Sapphire substrates

Visit: www.monocrystal.com