Taiwan's environmental protection agency has cleared flat panel maker Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子) to resume building a new factory in Tainan, a company executive said yesterday.
The sixth-generation plant will start mass production in the second quarter of next year after the clearance from the Environmental Protection Administration, finance director Dennis Chen (
The environmental agency asked the government in June to halt construction of the factory in Tainan because of concerns over pollution.
Chi Mei, the world's fourth-largest flat-panel maker by revenue, is targeting monthly capacity of 30,000 flat panels at the plant once it starts operation, Chen said. That will rise to 60,000 flat panels a month by the end of next year and the plant will eventually be able to produce 90,000 flat panels a month, he said.
NEXT GENERATION
The company also has plans to build an eighth-generation plant, but hasn't decided when to start construction. Earliest operation would be in the middle of 2009, because it takes a year-and-a-half to build a factory, Chen said.
Shares of Chi Mei gained NT$1.30, or 2.96 percent, to NT$45.30. Sales at Chi Mei Group will climb 40 percent to NT$700 billion (US$21.6 billion) next year, Loreta Chen (陳靜燕), a Chi Mei public relations official, said by telephone yesterday, confirming a report in the Chinese-language Economic Daily News. Growth will be driven by a 25 percent to 30 percent increase in flat-panel shipments, she said.
"The demand for LCDs will continue to exceed supplies in the near term," said Andrew Wang, who helps manage US$1.3 billion at Prudential Financial Securities Investment Trust Enterprise (
RIVALS
Elsewhere, AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) gained 1 percent to NT$63.60.
Smaller rivals Chunghwa Picture Tubes Co (
Innolux Display Corp (
Prime View International Co (
"Prime View's purchase signals that panel makers want capacity and that suggests demand is out there," said Robyn Hsu (
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],”
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
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