Swire Coca-Cola Taiwan Ltd yes-terday signed a preliminary agreement with the Ten Ren Tea Co (
The agreement calls for Coca-Cola to manage manufacturing and sales while Ten Ren will supply the raw materials and its trademark, starting this summer.
The oolong and green tea drinks will be packaged in 500cc bottles to appeal to the younger generation.
Recent market growth has been in green tea, which is one reason the companies chose the flavor, said Chuang Yuan-ming (
An industry watcher said the instant-tea market is still lucrative even though its market share already commands 34.6 percent of all beverage sales.
In the period from March last year until February, tea-beverage sales domestically topped NT$1.58 trillion, with green tea accounting for the lion's share of that amount at 32 percent, up from 29 percent in the previous year, Desmond Wang (王道恆), communication manager of ACNielsen Taiwan, said yesterday.
Although oolong tea accounts for 11 percent of all sales, profit from the mountain tea grew 19 percent compared with the same period last year, making it a competitive product, Wang said.
Hung Shih-ming (洪士民), public affairs manager at market leader Uni-President Enterprises Corp (統一企業), says it's not worried about the competition.
"We'd like to see them join the battle, since they will also provide an impetus for us to improve our products and marketing strategies," Hung said.
Swire Coca-Cola Taiwan and Ten Ren Tea are already looking beyond the domestic market.
"If the market share of our product reaches a certain level, we want to expand the products to other places in Asia such as China, Hong Kong and Singa-pore," said William Hsu (許偉倫), external affairs manager at Coca-Cola Taiwan.
"We call the collaboration a marriage of quality tea and excellent marketing," he said.
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose to No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) at 348th, Pegatron Corp (和碩) at 461st, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) at 494th and Wistron Corp (緯創) at
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong