Investment details Gimje factory scale-up from September plan

Production facility to be built by 2028, creating over 200 jobs

Move aims to secure large-scale supply capacity ahead of rising demand

Kim In-wook, head of Doosan's Electronics Business Group (second from left), poses for a photo with North Jeolla Province Governor Lee Won-taek (far left) and Gimje Mayor Jeong Seong-ju at a signing ceremony held Tuesday. [Doosan]
Kim In-wook, head of Doosan's Electronics Business Group (second from left), poses for a photo with North Jeolla Province Governor Lee Won-taek (far left) and Gimje Mayor Jeong Seong-ju at a signing ceremony held Tuesday. [Doosan]

Doosan announced Tuesday it had signed an investment agreement with North Jeolla Province and Gimje to build a dedicated production line for copper-clad laminates (CCL) for optical modules.

The signing ceremony, held at the North Jeolla Province government office, was attended by Governor Lee Won-taek, Gimje Mayor Jeong Seong-ju and Kim In-wook, head of Doosan's Electronics Business Group.

The agreement puts into concrete form the Gimje factory scale-up portion of Doosan's roughly 970 billion won ($733 million) investment plan announced in September.

Under the plan, Doosan will spend 399.2 billion won to build a new CCL production facility for optical modules — spanning about 33,000 square meters — next to its existing flexible copper-clad laminate (FCCL) factory in the Gimje Jipyeongseon General Industrial Complex by 2028, while hiring more than 200 new employees. The new production lines will begin coming online sequentially in the second half of 2028.

The expansion aims to meet surging demand for optical-module CCL driven by the proliferation of AI data centers. Doosan's domestic production lines are already running above 100 percent capacity.

CCL is a core material for printed circuit boards (PCBs). Optical-module CCL requires advanced technology because signal loss must be minimized for ultra-high-speed transmission.

Doosan currently supplies high-end CCL engineered to support the fine-circuit requirements of high-speed optical modules operating at 800 gigabits per second and above.

"Demand for optical-module CCL is surging as AI data centers expand, and this scale-up was decided on the basis of our customers' medium- to long-term needs," Kim said. "We will deliver the volumes our customers need on time."

Meanwhile, Doosan first signed an investment agreement with Gimje in 2022 and completed its FCCL factory in the Gimje Jipyeongseon General Industrial Complex in September 2024. Once the new facility is built, the Gimje factory will produce both FCCL and optical-module CCL.


keg@heraldcorp.com