Orchid farmers slammed airfreight companies yesterday for taking advantage of the port lockout on the US West Coast to double their rates, saying that the practice has cost them NT$210 million (US$6 million) over the past two months.
"We can't afford the airfreight costs which are causing us to operate at a loss," Tsang-yu Lee (李蒼裕), secretary-general of Taiwan Orchid Growers Associations (蘭花產銷發展協會) said yesterday during a press conference.
Lee led about 30 orchid growers to the legislature to protest against airfreight costs and said that it is hard to understand why the airlines kept raising the prices even after the strike moved into a cooling off period.
"Airfreight costs haves killed the profits of Taiwan's orchid growers, who export one-third of their annual production of 30 million orchid plants to the US," he said.
The orchard farmers yesterday demanded the government intervene on the price issue and requested they be compensated for their losses.
Representatives from local airlines admitted yesterday that they have been boosting airfreight prices to counter a jump in demand since the shippers' association in the US closed down 29 West Coast ports on Sept. 27.
An official from China Airlines (
EVA Airlines (
Toscanini Cheng (
Both local airlines, however, claimed that airfreight prices are in line with market prices.
Local airlines are also expecting that the rate will return to normal if the strike can be settled during negotiations between shippers and unions scheduled to restart for Dec. 20.
The Council of Agriculture yesterday said it was willing to play a role in mediating between the airlines and the farmers, adding that any subsidies privided to orchid farmers would violate WTO rules.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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