NOK is enhancing the electronic components business with the decision to increase its production capacity of flexible printed circuits (FPC). Collaborating with Nippon Mektron, an experienced FPC manufacturer, NOK is investing 12 billion yen to strengthen the production structure and is targeting to increase the aggregated sales volume for automotives of 50 billion yen in the first quarter of 2018 to 100 billion yen within the next 4-5 years. 

NOK will establish a collaborative organization with Nippon Mektron to expand the partnership in other automotive business modules, such as light bulbs, batteries. An FPC production system will be established in China, Vietnam and Hungary. The plants in China and Vietnam will be in charge of the pre-process while a production center of post process will be established to be in charge of customizing products according to customer’s needs. In Hungary, its various small plants used for monitoring voltage of lithium-ion batteries will be consolidated for manufacturing FPC to enhance the production efficiency as well.

FPC is a thin-film flexible electronic circuit board used as a component in smartphones and computers. With the current trend of smartphones, NOK decided to invest in FPC manufacturing for automotives, expecting a higher demand in FPC from automotive industry due to the trend of autonomous driving and electric vehicles.