Chi Mei

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This article is about the plastics company. For the rebellion movement, see Chimei.

Chi Mei Corporation (Chinese: 奇美實業廠) is a plastics producer in Taiwan. It is the largest maker of ABS resin in the world, producing about 1 million tons of ABS annually as of 1999.^[1] It has factories in Tainan and Zhenjiang.^[2] It also produces acrylic glass, polystyrene, thermoplastic elastomer and synthetic rubber.^[3] The company was founded by Wen-long Shi in 1960 as Chi Mei Industrial Company Ltd., the first acrylic sheet manufacturer in Taiwan; it was renamed Chi Mei Corporation in 1992.^[4]

Chi Mei Optoelectronics, founded in 1997 as one of the subsidiaries of Chi Mei Corporation. The Chi Mei Group, a privately held company, is the largest shareholder in publicly listed Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO). CMO is the world’s No. 4 and Taiwan’s No. 2 largest maker of TFT-LCD panels^[5] and the likely owner of Westinghouse Digital Electronics. Though CEO Douglas Woo has maintained the confidentiality of the ownership of the private Westinghouse licensee, they admit a significant vertically-integrated relationship exists between the two.^[6]

[edit] About Chi Mei

Chi Mei Industrial Factory was founded by Wen-Lung Hsu in 1968 to meet the need for Polystyrene. Chi Mei has a partnership with Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. of Japan (Mitsubishi holds 27.08% of shares)^[7]. In 2001, the Chi Mei Group along with IBM Japan set up International Display Technology, which it subsequently sold to Sony in 2005^[8].