Welcome Taiwan Company Ltd (
"We've inked a deal with Huey-Yang to acquire all their Kayo supermarkets," said Tsai Yu-jen (
He said his company has submitted the deal to the Fair Trade Commission for approval.
Tsai refused to elaborate, saying only that "the deal involves hundreds of millions of NT dollars."
The 120-store Welcome Taiwan is a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based retail giant Dairy Farm International Holdings Ltd. Dairy Farm currently operates more than 200 supermarkets in Hong Kong, and opened its first store in Taiwan in 1987.
Once the merger is finalized, Welcome Taiwan will be able to boost its store number from 120 outlets to 144, significantly more than Taiwan's second largest supermarket chain, Sungching (松青超市).
Sungching, a subsidiary of Wei Chuan Food Corp (
"We hope the move can further strengthen Welcome Taiwan's market position," Tsai said.
If everything goes well, as early as mid-February consumers will see Welcome logos on Kayo stores, he added.
About 400 employees work in Huey-Yang, including office staff and full-time and part-time store clerks.
Tsai said the company will conduct a review and retain some Huey-Yang staff.
Sluggish sales forced the Huey-Yang board to consider selling in December of last year. The company previously held talks with the Wei Chuan Food Corp (味全食品), Chinese media reported.
An analyst said the deal will give Welcome a shot in the arm.
"Welcome chose the most efficient way to expand ? that is, by acquiring other stores rather than setting up new ones by itself," said Wen Tuan-lien (文端廉), a retail industry analyst at Polaris Securities Co (寶來證券).
She added that size is very important in the retail business.
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