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?"
DAMAGE REPORT: Global central banks are assessing war-driven inflation risks as the law of unintended consequences careens around the world, spiking oil prices Central banks from Washington to London and from Jakarta to Taipei are about to make their first assessments of economic damage after more than two weeks of conflict between the US and Iran. Decisions this week encompassing every member of the G7 and eight of the world’s 10 most-traded currency jurisdictions are likely to confirm to investors that the specter of a new inflation shock is already worrying enough to prompt heightened caution. The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to do exactly what everyone anticipated weeks ahead of its March 17-18 policy gathering: hold rates steady. The narrative surrounding that
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) share of the global foundry market rose to almost 70 percent last year amid booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI), market information advisory firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Thursday. The contract chipmaker posted US$122.54 billion in revenue, up 36.1 percent from a year earlier, accounting for 69.9 percent of the global market, TrendForce said. Its share was up from 64.4 percent in 2024, it said. TSMC’s closest rival, Samsung Electronics, was a distant second, posting US$12.63 billion in sales, down 3.9 percent from a year earlier, for a 7.2 percent share of the global market. In the
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
RSS