Taiwan will send a quarantine official to Washington State to inspect its orchards and transportation network before deciding if a new import ban on all US apple imports can be lifted, an official said yesterday.
Taiwan, the third-largest importer of Washington apples, imposed the ban Thursday after finding a codling moth larvae in a shipment of the apples.
Chang Shih-yang, from the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine, will visit the US in the next few days, said Chang Hung-yi, a Council of Agriculture official. The ban is not expected to last more than a couple of weeks, several retailers speculated yesterday.
"It may take about two weeks for the US authorities to process the measure and to receive approval from the Taiwan government [before lifting the ban]," said Raymond Tsui (
"The ban is not likely to go longer than a month because the government will feel the pressure from the US which imports millions of boxes of apples annually," said a market insider who preferred not to be named.
According to the bureau's Lee Chin-lung (
The codling moth, a destructive fruit pest introduced into the US over 200 years ago, now is prevalent throughout North America as well as most areas were apples are grown.
The codling moth attacks a wide range of plants that bear fruit including apples, pears, quince, hawthorn and crab apples.
Taiwan grows both apples and pears.
"In an effort to protect local orchards, we decided to issue the ban," Lee said.
In the US, one market representative objected to the ban.
"We feel Taiwan was really quite onerous in its actions," said Mark Powers, vice president for the Northwest Horticultural Council in Yakima, Washington. "We've been shipping to Taiwan for 25 years and never before had a codling moth detected, so this is really an extraordinary event."
Meanwhile, local retailers don't expect to see a shortage this month.
"We still have six containers or more than 7,000 boxes of Washington apples in stock and can sufficiently meet market demand for three weeks," said Fiona Wang (王彤芳), a manager at RT-Mart (大潤發), which is a joint venture between French and Taiwanese companies.
The company doesn't have any plan to raise apple prices because of the ban, she said.
More than 80 percent of locally sold apples are imported from the US, with the remainder coming from Japan and South Korea.
"If we see a shortage in US imports, the company may increase the amount of Japanese and [South] Korean apple imports," Tsui said.
Taiwan is the third-largest importer of Washington apples and the nation imported 3.3 million 19kg boxes of apples last year.
After several years flying high as Asia’s best Nvidia Corp proxy, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is increasingly vying with other artificial intelligence (AI) stocks for investor attention. Stock traders are chasing a wider array of beneficiaries as mainstream usage of AI creates demand for hardware beyond the most-advanced chips TSMC makes for Nvidia. Subthemes from the deepening memory crunch to advances in robotics are also luring bids. At the same time, investment caps on single stocks are pushing funds to diversify, while retail investors long familiar with TSMC through its US depositary receipts are being offered a broader set of
Netherlands-based semiconductor equipment supplier ASML Holding NV yesterday said that it is planning to hire an additional 1,000 people in Taiwan this year in response to growing demand from clients. ASML had previously planned to recruit 600 people this year, but that the plan has been adjusted upward, ASML vice president and ASML Taiwan general manager Grace Wang (汪佳慧) told reporters. ASML has a workforce of more than 4,500 in Taiwan, accounting for about 10 percent of its global total, Wang said. This year’s recruitment campaign would focus on adding people in the customer support, manufacturing and supply chain domains to assist ASML
UNDER MICROSCOPE: Taiwan detained three people who allegedly conspired to buy servers in Taiwan and export them using fraudulent documentation, prosecutors said Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Saturday urged Super Micro Computer Inc to tighten up on compliance after Taiwan detained three people this week for allegedly making fraudulent declarations about artificial intelligence (AI) servers made by its US partner. The development marked the nation’s first crackdown on semiconductor smuggling, which grew after the US slapped restrictions on exports of high-end chips such as Nvidia AI accelerators to China. Nvidia is “rigorous” in explaining regulations to all of its partners, Huang told reporters after arriving in Taipei. “Ultimately Super Micro has to run their own company,” he said in response to
Nvidia Corp yesterday announced that CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) would attend an employee meeting in Taipei tomorrow to celebrate the launch of the company’s Taiwan headquarters project. Huang would attend a gathering at the site of Nvidia’s planned headquarters in Beitou Shilin Technology Park (北投士林科技園區), the company said in a statement. After arriving in Taiwan on Saturday last week, Huang told reporters that he plans to meet with Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), and would attend the groundbreaking ceremony for Nvidia’s Taiwan headquarters tomorrow. Nvidia has not yet applied
RSS