Refining equipment and refining tools both flat

摘要

The market for refining equipment had been growing for use with semiconductors but triggered off by the major falling off of the economy since the latter half of 2008 after the Lehman Shock, there has been a greater increase in the shift to the field of LED production as a source of demand. Recently too, use with power electronic devices such as SiC semiconductors has been viewed as a field where the demand has been spreading. In 2013, during the first half of the year, there was the sense that the demand had bottomed, and it appeared that during the latter half of the year the demand had started to rise again. In Japan, however, because there were no instances of large scale capital investment the situation was such that no great expectation can be placed on a demand for the super large facilities with capacities ranging from 500-1,000 m~3 an hour for use at large plants as had been the case before. As for the LED field, due to orders from the area of the blue and white LEDs, which had become very active since early 2010, the recovery of the market, which had been sluggish due to the effects from the Lehman Shock, became quite clear.