Doosan makes record W970b investment to expand CCL lines at home and in China

Doosan Corp. announced Thursday it will invest about 970 billion won ($709 million) to expand its copper-clad laminate (CCL) production facilities in South Korea and China — the largest such investment in the company's history, coming roughly five months after it announced a separate investment in Thailand in April.

CCL is a core material used in printed circuit boards (PCBs) and is widely used in AI accelerators, network switches and optical modules installed in AI data centers.

Doosan will spend about 420 billion won domestically to add a CCL production line for optical modules, and about 550 billion won to build a new factory in China for CCL used in AI accelerators and network switches. The investment will be deployed in stages over three years through 2028, with the new lines coming online sequentially in the second half of that year.

The choice of production locations reflects the nature of each product and the urgency of demand. The domestic line will focus on optical-module CCL, where quality control and protection of core technology are paramount, drawing on specialized personnel. China was chosen for its concentration of global PCB manufacturers, which enables faster customer response and allows factories to be built quickly to meet rapidly shifting demand.

The aggressive investment push is driven by surging CCL demand as global spending on AI data centers accelerates. Major technology companies have been announcing large-scale expansion plans in quick succession, pushing CCL order volumes into the trillion-won range — a scale previously unseen. Doosan's domestic production lines are already running above 100 percent capacity, and the company determined that expansion is necessary to keep pace with the flood of incoming orders.

Through this investment, Doosan aims to cement its position as a supplier with both the technology and the production capacity to meet global demand. Its technical credentials are already established: high-end CCL for AI accelerators must meet stringent signal-loss specifications that only a handful of companies can satisfy, and Doosan has become a key supplier to leading global AI chipmakers in this segment. The company also supplies high-end CCL for optical modules, which convert electrical signals between servers and network equipment into optical signals.

That technological edge is showing up in earnings. Doosan's Electronics Business Group, which oversees the CCL business, crossed the 1 trillion won sales threshold for the first time in 2024, then reached about 1.9 trillion won last year — an 86 percent increase from the prior year.

"Global customers recognize the technological capabilities and supply capacity that Doosan has built up over many years," Doosan Corp. President Yoo Seung-woo said. "As the AI data center market grows and customer orders become larger in scale, we will stay one step ahead with proactive investment, deliver the volumes our customers need on time, live up to their trust, and accelerate our mid- to long-term growth."