Now that its vice-like control over the alcohol and cigarette markets has passed into history, the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Board (
The bureau was reborn as the Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp(台灣菸酒公司) yesterday, with Chairman Sam Wang (王得山) vowing to raise annual business turnover to NT$110 billion within five years.
Wang, who also serves as vice finance minister, said that Taiwan Tobacco's operations would be significantly consolidated -- folding 15 local offices into eight sales outlets -- and be based on four basic principles, including satisfying consumer demand, modernizing sales outlets, implementing flexible pricing policies and expanding globally.
"Taiwan Tobacco will eventually become a renowned alcohol and tobacco company in the Asia-Pacific region," Wang said.
Minister of Finance Lee Yung-san (
The company has enjoyed guaranteed sales and profits for almost 55 years and is now facing a potential surge of competition from imports since the cigarette and alcohol market was liberalized earlier this year.
While the market was initially opened in the early 1990s, it was only after Taiwan entered the WTO in January this year that the government permitted private companies to join production and sale of all related products in the local market.
Taiwan Tobacco isn't overly concerned about being able to remain profitable, Wang said. When Japanese brewer Kirin entered the local market in 1994, Taiwan Tobacco's share of the beer market wasn't significantly impacted, he said.
According to Lin Kuo-min (林國民), head of the Taiwan Tobacco's business section, Kirin grabbed about 8 percent of the market when it first came to Taiwan. But increased marketing efforts by Taiwan Tobacco helped it to regain some of that share.
According to another Taiwan Tobacco executive who declined to be named, the company will try to pressure retailers to stock the company's products, even if consumers aren't buying them.
"We'll be pressuring convenience stores such as 7-Eleven to keep our products on the shelves regardless of whether sales are good or not," he said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained