■ PETROLEUM
Alcohol-gas firm planned
Taiwan Fertilizer Co (台肥) and state-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) will invest NT$2 billion (US$59.92 million) to set up a joint venture to produce alcohol-gasoline blends for motor vehicles, a spokesman for the Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Friday. The spokesman said the investment would be made within a month to set up a new company to produce alcohol using sugarcane and sweet potatoes as raw material and that the alcohol would be used to produce an alcohol-gasoline blend containing 3 percent alcohol. The ministry plans to set up seven filling stations in Taipei in September and work out a plan to encourage motorists to use the fuel through subsidies.
■ ECONOMY
Steve Chen seeks investment
Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Chen (陳瑞隆) on Friday instructed his ministry to redouble efforts to attract investment by domestic and foreign manufacturers, especially those in the photovoltaic polysilicon sector. Chen issued the directive while chairing a meeting on luring more investment to Taiwan, during which he said the Ministry of Economic Affairs had given the green light to 476 major investment projects for a total value of NT$539.7 billion (US$16.2 billion) during the first four months of this year. The figure accounts for 53.63 percent of the targeted amount of NT$1.0065 trillion which was set by the ministry for this year's new investment projects by the private sector, Chen said.
■ JEWELRY
Berkshire eyes two firms
Billionaire Warren Buffett's company announced plans on Friday to buy two gold jewelry manufacturers, Bel-Oro International Inc and Aurafin LLC. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Berkshire Hathaway Inc said both Bel-Oro and Aurafin are leading gold jewelry manufacturers and distributors in what has historically been a fragmented industry. Berkshire plans to combine the two companies into a new unit called the Richline Group. The two jewelry makers generate more than US$500 million in revenue annually.
■ ENVIRONMENT
`Sydney declaration' touted
Australia is planning a regional carbon emissions trading scheme that would count China and the US, and hopes for backing at a September meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders, Australian media said yesterday. As host of this year's APEC summit in Sydney, Australian Prime Minister John Howard was backing a "Sydney declaration" on a scheme placing a price on carbon emissions. Howard is expecting a carbon trading report from a government taskforce at the end of the month. The taskforce will recommend a trading scheme indirectly raising the price of carbon fuels but not set a formal target for greenhouse gas reductions, the Weekend Australian newspaper said.
■ ELECTRONICS
Sharp to build big LCD plant
Japanese electronics maker Sharp Corp will spend ¥500 billion (US$4.1 billion) to build one of the world's largest factories for liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panels, reports said yesterday. The planned factory in the western region of Osaka will open its door as early as next year with full operation expected to start in 2009, the Nikkei newspaper said. It will be capable of producing more than 22 million 32-inch panels annually, making it among the biggest LCD factories in the world, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”