Truly places Japan order to build out Sichuan e-paper plant
Truly has a major manufacturing buildout planned, even as revenue has declined this year.
Truly International (信利國際), a Hong Kong-listed display maker with factories in Shanwei, in Guangdong province, has placed the first equipment order for a planned e-paper display plant in Renshou, in China's Sichuan province. A Truly unit agreed on Oct. 20 to buy coater/developers from Japan's Screen Finetech Solutions, a maker of display production equipment, for 4.8 billion yen (about HK$237.6 million, or about US$30.3 million), Truly said in an Oct. 20 filing.
Coater/developers handle a light-sensitive coating on glass, a step in making the thin-film transistor (TFT) backplanes that drive a screen. By our reading, the order suggests Truly will make those backplanes itself. The filing doesn't say, and it doesn't name who will supply the e-paper film or who will buy the panels.
Truly will ask shareholders at a special meeting, with details due by Nov. 10, to let it buy the rest of the plant's equipment within 12 months of approval, up to HK$6 billion (about US$765 million) in all. By our calculation, the signed order is about 4% of that ceiling. Truly's board expects a group of Chinese banks, which it didn't name, to lend about RMB 2 billion to RMB 3 billion (about US$300 million to US$449 million) toward those further purchases.
The project's environmental assessment puts total investment at about RMB 5.08 billion (about US$761 million) and capacity at 960,000 square meters (about 10.3 million square feet) of e-paper displays per year, mainly for e-readers and e-paper notebooks, LEDinside reported. The filing gives no total cost for the plant, and the assessment's figure is slightly less than the HK$6 billion Truly may spend on equipment alone. The assessment's total is also less than the RMB 9 billion (about US$1.3 billion) that Laibao Hi-Tech (莱宝高科) is investing in its own e-paper line in Zhejiang province.
Truly already owns about 35% of a company that has made LCD panels in Renshou since 2021. Meanwhile, Truly's overall sales are shrinking: group revenue fell 13.5% from a year earlier to about HK$10.8 billion (about US$1.4 billion) in the first nine months of 2026, Truly said. Truly blamed lower smartphone-related sales in China for the first half's drop.
Sources: Truly International (HKEX filing), Truly International (HKEX filing, September turnover), Truly International (2026 interim report), LEDinside, Screen Finetech Solutions, LEDinside (LED在线), SCREEN Finetech Solutions (Coater/Developer SK Series page)
Editor: Ian Lamont
