Amid the rolling hills of Taichung County, a massive US$31 billion investment is fast changing a landscape of sugar cane and sweet potato farms into lines of slick towers, which will house the latest in cutting edge technology.
That technology will allow the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區) to deliver to the world's lounge rooms the latest in wide flat panel TVs and super computer screens, some big enough to match a three-seater couch in size.
But it is the speed of development and the rate of companies willing to sign on to the project, on the outskirts of Taichung City, that has impressed its backers and confounded critics.
PHOTO: AFP
Lai Ying-hsi (
"They felt why does Taiwan need another high-tech industrial park while the other ones in the south are only half booked by potential investors due to economic sluggishness," Lai said.
Since the study, 72 companies ready to invest NT$1.04 trillion (US$31.04 billion) have won approvals, among them industry leaders including AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技) and US-based Corning Inc.
Lai said that it was Taichung's stable electricity and steady water supply which eventually convinced the authorities to proceed. Taichung boasts one of a biggest thermal power plants in Asia, while chronic water shortages have dogged science and technology parks elsewhere in the country.
Yang Wen-ke (楊文科), deputy director-general of the Provisional Office of Central Taiwan Science Park (中科籌備處), said the rapid pace of its development -- in an industry which is consistently tied to tight construction deadlines to deliver next generation products -- was a big factor in winning over more firms.
The first companies began opening their doors within 10 months of the project's drafting.
"The pace of its development is the fastest ever in Taiwan's efforts to build high-tech industrial parks," Yang said. "It changed so fast, you would be amazed by the vast differences registered over every month."
It took AU Optronics just 15 months to complete construction of an NT$80 billion complex to produce 60,000 panels a month, including some for revolutionary 74x60 inch television sets.
"AU Optronics Chairman Lee Kun-yao (李焜耀) said `if AU Optronics had built the plant elsewhere, the construction may not have been as swift'," Lai said, adding that the project was completed 47 days ahead of schedule.
"That is important to a time-sensitive industry," Lai said.
US-based Corning followed suit, with a groundbreaking in September last year for a glass melting plant that will produce compacted glass substrate to be used in LCD screens.
Then came local memory chip maker ProMOS Technologies, which is designing cutting-edge 90-nanometer technology to produce microchips and 40,000 300mm wafers a month in two projects which cost NT$85 billion to build.
While optoelectronics will account for 34 percent of the park's ongoing investment projects, the balance will be filled by precision machinery, biotechnology, semiconductor, computer peripherals and telecommunication projects.
"The demand for land is much stronger than our previous estimates," Yang said.
Authorities plan to expand the size of the park to 1,200 hectares after 94 percent of the current 413 hectares of land was booked.
Yang said he was confident the new industrial park would eventually outperform the Hsinchu Science Industrial Park (新竹科學園區) in the north, which has been hailed as the nation's answer to Silicon Valley in the US.
The Hsinchu science park houses 384 high-tech companies focusing on semiconductors, telecommunications, and computer related industries. It churned out products worth US$32.41 billion last year.
But the LCD and microchip industry is renowned for its huge consumption of water and investors at Hsinchu have been annoyed by past occasional water shortages.
"The new industrial park is fast coming from behind," Yang said proudly of the Taichung project.
Lai touched a raw nerve in regards to competing parks elsewhere, when he asked rhetorically: "Have you ever heard of central Taiwan being gripped by a water shortage?"
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by