AU Optronics, better known as AUO, is a Taiwanese manufacturing company that is active in the LCD business and it announced that it started operations at its newest production facility located in China. The Chinese plant is a ''giant'' and the company expects to increase its output by at least 50 percent.

The production plant, which is located in south east China is going to produce LCD screens for the great number of consumer electronics manufacturing companies that are located in the same general area, said AUO executives, who were cited by the news site vnunet. The AU Optronics LCD production plant is located near the city of Xiamen and revenues are expected to rise by more than $20 billion over the next five years, once the foundry reaches its full production capacity. Alongside its huge size, another unusual fact about the Chinese facility is that it will manufacture a very wide range of LCD products.

While the small and medium LCD screen that will be produced at the Xiamen factory will be used for general electronics devices like mobile phones and personal media players, the large and extra large panel screens will be send to flat screen TV sets and computer monitors manufacturers. According to estimates from AUO, the new production plant should have a nominal output of around five million small and medium LCD panels per month as well as almost half a million large and extra large screens.

''As China continues to shape the global economic landscape, our mainland China customers must have access to real-time and immediate support in order to be competitive and grow their businesses," said AU Optronics chairman K Y Lee in a press conference. "We recognized China's potential many years ago and have steadily increased our investment in the market over the past six years." AUO's chairman is at the same time the president of a competing company, Benq, and some months ago, he was under suspicion of trading secrets between the two companies.