Expecting a serious shortage of glass used in the colour picture tube (CPT) industry worldwide, Samcor Glass of India, a three-way joint venture between US-based Corning, Samsung and Samtel group, has decided to advance its Rs450 core investment in setting up a greenfield plant for making panels for CPTs. The company was earlier scheduled to start construction in 2002 and during the interim period, the plan was to import panels from the Samsung facility at Korea. Instead, it now plans to to into production by September 2002. The decision to start manufacturing panels was taken at a meeting of the partners in Seoul. Construction is expected to begin shortly, sources said. A major reason for the expected shortage is that most CTV makers are now moving to large screen CTVs, which use up large glass tonnage. Super flat TVs are known to use up to 20-30% more glass.
