The industrial sector luckily escaped the brunt of Tropical Storm Mindulle, government officials told the Taipei Times yesterday.
"Unlike the ailing agricultural sector, damage to the industrial sector is estimated to be less than NT$1 billion," said an official at the Industrial Development Bureau (IDB), who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Agricultural damage totalled NT$5.75 billion as of yesterday, the Council of Agriculture said.
PHOTO: HSIEH WEN-HUA, TAIPEI TIMES
Damage to industry was mostly minor, including damage to buildings and fences and flood-soaked machines, which could be easily restored, the official said.
Most of the damage occurred to businesses and factories located in the center and south of the country, including chemical and mechanical companies, the official said, while most of the electronics companies in the north were less affected.
Some 1,000 companies located in central Taiwan faced water shortages after floodwaters damaged a water gate at Li Yu Tan Reservoir (
Water will be supplied to the area on a rotating basis, the state-run Taiwan Water Supply Corp (
The Water Resources Agency said in a statement that it expected to fix the problem by around 8pm yesterday.
"If the problem could be resolved by 8pm, the water supply could return to normal by 8am [today] ? to supply 100 tonnes of water per day for household and industrial demands," said Lin Fang-song (
Otherwise rationing will continue, the company said, which would affect the Taichung Industrial Park (
Companies in these two parks, including Largan Precision Co (
Largan is the nation's largest maker of lenses and shutters used in digital cameras.
Tsai Song-lin (
Uni-President said that rationing would not have a huge impact on it as its factories in the Taichung industrial park are set to manufacture forage, which does not require much amount of water.
The IDB official said companies in the area would receive an adequate supply of water for the time being.
"The Taiching Industrial Park is equipped with its own water-storage tanks which are capable of supplying more than 30 tonnes of water for a three-day demand," said a section chief at the bureau who asked to remain anonymous.
The parks also provide tankers to transport water to factories suffering shortages, the official 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