■ China Steel to invest NT$30bn
China Steel Corp (中鋼), Taiwan's largest steelmaker, said it will invest more than NT$30 billion (US$940 million) in the next four years to expand its production facilities on the island. "We want to expand in the products that are harder to make and that earn bigger profits, and where there's less competition," Chung Lo-min (鍾樂民), a company vice president, said yesterday. The planned investment "is aimed at upgrading our products," he said. The Kaohsiung-based company will build facilities that make cold-rolled steel and other products for applications including automobiles, furniture and liquid crystal displays, he said. Increasing output from China, which makes a third of the world's steel, has pushed the Taiwanese steelmaker to lower its prices for two consecutive quarters. The Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), Taiwan's biggest diversified industrial company, has said it will build a NT$135 billion steel mill. China Steel's new projects may include a production line capable of making more than 1.7 million metric tons of cold-rolled steel a year, using hot-rolled steel the company makes, Chung said.
■ TSMC's December sales flat
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world's largest contract microchip maker, said yesterday its sales last month edged down 0.4 percent from November. TSMC posted NT$27.42 billion (US$851.55 million) in December sales, compared with NT$27.52 billion in November, the firm said. However, the December figure was up 37.6 percent from a year earlier, it said. Cumulative sales last year rose to a record NT$264.59 billion, up 3.4 percent, the company said. Fourth-quarter sales stood at NT$81.16 billion, compared with its Oct. 27 forecast of NT$77 billion to NT$79 billion, and third-quarter sales of NT$69.26 billion, it added.
■ Property bidding halted
The National Property Bureau under the Ministry of Finance yesterday announced that the bidding process for state-owned properties scheduled for this month will be halted for a systemic overhaul. This will affect a total of 191 land bids nationwide, the bureau said. The decision was made in response to a scandal that erupted last week, when a post office worker was found colluding with land brokers to intercept land tender bids mailed to a special post office box and tamper with the bidding prices for certain property developers to help them win the contracts. "After a review is taken to improve bidding procedures, we'll issue new announcements to auction off these state real estates," said Kao Chih-ta (高志達), secretary general of the bureau.
■ Socle denies acquisition plan
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (中芯) of China may acquire Taiwanese chip-design company Socle Technology Corp (虹晶科技), the Commercial Times reported yesterday, without specifying its source. Socle president Liu Yu-yuan (劉育源) denied that the company may be acquired, according to the report. He said Socle is seeking alliances with several suppliers of made-to-order semiconductors and investment by the chipmakers is not a priority, the Taipei-based newspaper said yesterday. Semiconductor Manufacturing is China's biggest made-to-order chipmaker.
■ NT dollar rises
The New Taiwan dollar advanced against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, rising NT$0.246 to close at NT$31.952, the highest close since Aug. 12 last year. A total of US$1.045 billion changed hands during the day's trading.
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