Taiwan's biggest solar cell maker, Motech Industries Inc (茂迪), yesterday said it had inked an NT$10 billion (US$305 million) contract with Renewable Energy Corp to secure supplies of silicon wafers for the next five years amid an ongoing shortage of the key material.
"With the contract, Motech will have a sufficient supply of silicon wafers [to cope with its capacity expansion]," Motech said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday after the market closed.
The Norwegian Renewable Energy Corp is the world's No.3 supplier of silicon wafers.
The new deal was announced by Motech after the company ended its five-year agreement with the world's biggest silicon wafer supplier, MEMC Electronic Materials Inc, early last month.
In mid-July, Motech signed an agreement with Chinese ReneSola Co (
After ending the deal with MEMC, Motech cut its output target for the year by 45 percent to 110 megawatts from the 200 megawatts it had originally planned. But the adjusted output would still represent an 83 percent increase from the 60 megawatts made last year, the Taiwanese company said.
Motech said it aimed to further boost its annual capacity to 240 megawatts by next year.
Shares of Motech dropped 2.59 percent to NT$715 on the GRETAI Securities Market yesterday.
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