Sharp said Tuesday it will spend about 380 billion yen ($3.2 billion) to build the world's biggest plant to manufacture liquid crystal display panels for televisions in Sakai, Japan.

The LCD panel plant will be the first in the world to use 10th-generation glass substrates, the world's largest size (2,850 mm x 3,050 mm). This 10th-generation glass substrate will yield six LCD panels in the 60-inch class, eight panels in the 50-inch class, or 15 panels in the 40-inch class, making it possible to fabricate LCD panels for large-screen TVs with extremely high levels of efficiency.

Construction is slated to start in November of this year, with production operations scheduled to start by March 2010.