Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠) said yesterday the Chiayi plant that was hit by a fire on Sunday accounted for just 0.7 percent of its sales and the company would use other facilities to make up for the lost capacity.
While the company, the nation’s largest plastics maker, tried to downplay the damage that the accident would cost the company, its shares fell 1.46 percent to close at NT$67.50 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday, underperforming the TAIEX which edged up 0.02 percent from Friday’s closing.
Nan Ya president Wu Chia-chau (吳嘉昭) said the Chiayi plant had a monthly output of 2,000 tonnes of synthetic paper.
In a stock exchange filing, the company said it had not yet been able to assess the damage for now.
However, “as all losses would be covered by insurance, the impact on the company’s finance and business operation is limited,” Wu said in the filing.
Nan Ya reported NT$17.16 billion (US$549 million) in sales last month, the company filing said. Based on this figure, damage from the fire could cost it about NT$120 million in sales each month. Local media, however, estimated that the loss could rise to NT$150 million per month, citing unnamed company sources.
The company did not say how long it would take to resume production at the plant.
Last month’s sales rose 25.3 percent from a year ago but declined 9 percent from the previous month’s level, according to Nan Ya’s past exchange filings.
In the first nine months of the year, revenue increased 40.3 percent to NT$160.96 billion, Nan Ya said in the filing.
Separately, three other affiliates under the Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團) released their sales figures for last month and for the first three quarters.
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化), which shut one of its refineries in Yunlin in July due to a fire, saw sales drop 12.6 percent from a year ago to NT$48.45 billion last month. On a month-on-month basis, however, sales were up 2.5 percent from August due to higher oil prices.
Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑) reported that sales last month increased 22 percent from a year ago to NT$15.55 billion, but fell 13 percent from August.
Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corp (台灣化學纖維) reported NT$21.5 billion in sales last month, up 22 percent year-on-year but down 4 percent month-on-month.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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],”