The corona crisis has caused significant problems in the availability of several components and equipment over the past year. This time, however, the nasty news is due to the forces of nature, which have wreaked havoc, at least in the manufacture of screens.

According to DigiTimes, Paul Peng, CEO of panel manufacturer AU Optronics, has confirmed that the earthquake that hit Taiwan last week has affected the company’s production. Exact figures on the losses are not available, but Peng said the company took a few hours to clean up and repair the damage from the quake before production could be restarted. AUO manufactures hundreds of thousands of LCD panels every day and has already been able to return to normal production.

Perhaps the most significant damage from the earthquake also affected Nippei Electric Glass’s Shiga-Takatsuki production plant, which is closely related to the displays. The quake is said to have caused a five-hour outage at the plant and damaged production equipment. NEG owns about 10% of the world’s display glass manufacturing and, according to Peng, AUO, it could take up to 3-4 months for production to return to normal. The display glasses manufactured by NEG are used by several manufacturers, but the company has a particularly warm relationship with LG through the joint venture.

Source: Tom’s Hardware