China may tighten environmental controls on rare earth mining, further raising the cost of metals vital to global high-tech industry, Xinhua news agency said yesterday.
The report will add to international concern over the supply of the minerals needed to produce items such as cellphones, missiles and solar energy panels. China now produces 97 percent of the world’s supply and has recently been -accused of blocking rare earth -exports to Japan.
Xinhua cited industry insiders as saying Chinese authorities are considering tightening pollution standards for rare earth miners, which will increase the cost of production and may raise the price of rare earth exports.
Yang Wanxi, a government adviser involved in the drafting of new regulations on rare earths, was cited as saying the standards were aimed at forcing producers to upgrade production techniques. Experts have suggested that the government consider eliminating small producers with annual production capacity of less than 8,000 tonnes of mixed rare earth products, Yang said.
Most of the industrialized world, including the US, Japan and Europe, have largely abandoned their production of rare earths in favor of cheaper Chinese exports, but there are now mounting calls for nations to work to diversify supply.
Japanese companies say that China has blocked exports of rare earths to them since September, amid a dispute between the two governments over islands in the East China Sea.
Chinese officials last week assured US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that China would remain a reliable supplier.
However, Clinton has made clear that countries like Australia and the US need to act to protect the supply.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by