Everlight Electronics Co., Ltd., currently Taiwan’s biggest LED packager, has recently bought 15.9% of Tecore’s shares to secure supply of LED chips as it expands output to meet rising demand, according to an article on Taiwan Economic News.

Everlight acquired the Tecore shares through a private-equity placement, in which Tecore put up 25 million shares for sale to raise NT$350 million (US$10.6 million at US$1:NT$33).

As extra-bright blue chip supply would likely run short in the second half of 2010, Everlight needs to secure sufficient supply of LED chips for the orders it recently landed with Samsung for LED backlight modules for TVs. Also, the company is likely to supply the modules to AmTRAN Technology soon.

However, Everlight’s vice president B.Y. Liu said he had not heard about such contracts. He said the company is expanding because it is upbeat about demand for LED backlights and LED lighting.

Everlight boosts capacity of surface mount device (SMD) LED packages to 1.2 billion units from 600 million, and plans to spend NT$2 billion (US$60 million) on expansions at the two factories in mainland China.