INDUSTRY
FPG to build Texas plant
Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團), Taiwan’s biggest diversified industrial company, plans to spend about US$800 million building ethylene and propylene plants in the US to tap demand for the chemicals. The proposed plants in Texas will be able to produce 450,000 tonnes of ethylene and 400,000 tonnes of propylene a year, Lee Chih-tsuen (李志村), a member of the company’s executive board, told reporters yesterday. Construction may start in 2012, he said. Formosa Plastics needs the plants for raw materials that will be made into products for the US, and Central and Southern American markets, he said. “We don’t have enough of them,” Lee said. The plants will use natural gas as a raw material, he said.
CHEMICALS
Russia signs fertilizer deal
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev yesterday oversaw the signing of a US$1 billion deal with Japanese and Chinese firms for a fertilizer plant. Russian government-affiliated Ammoni signed a contract with Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Sojitz Corporation and China National Chemical Engineering Corporation, to build a plant producing ammonia and methanol. The plant, to be located in the central Russian region of Tatarstan about 1,000km east of Moscow, is expected to come online in 2015. It will produce just over 2,000 tonnes of ammonia a day, among other fertilizers.
MINING
Xstrata invests in Mauritania
Swiss mining group Xstrata is to invest about US$6 billion (4.4 billion euros) in the production of iron in Mauritania, the country’s mining minister Mohammad Abdallah Ould Oudaa said during a mining conference in Mauritania that ended on Thursday. Xstrata on Friday said it was “far too early in the process to commit to numbers but Xstrata is committed to creating a world-class iron ore business and clearly Mauritania will play a key part in that objective.” The company also disclosed that it now controlled 50.1 percent of the Australian group Sphere Minerals, which is part of a 50-50 joint venture with the Mauritanian national industry and mining company SNIM in three projects.
AVIATION
Vibrations a ‘minor issue’
An engine problem which caused vibrations on a domestic Qantas flight, prompting the pilot to turn back, was a “minor issue,” the airline’s chief executive said yesterday. A Boeing 767 with 234 passengers on board returned to Perth, in Western Australia, 10 minutes after taking off to fly to Melbourne on Friday after its crew detected something unusual in one engine. The incident comes after Qantas grounded its entire fleet of Airbus A380 superjumbos after a mid-air blowout on one of the planes’ Rolls-Royce engines earlier this month prompted serious safety worries.
AUTOMOBILES
GM IPO oversubscribed
General Motors Co’s landmark initial public offering has already garnered US$60 billion in orders, six times the amount it had planned to raise. The shares are expected to start trading on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges on Thursday. It will likely price around the top end of the US$26 to US$29 per share range and the full over-allotment option — additional shares underwriters can sell to help stabilize the stock after it begins trading — will likely be exercised, three people familiar with the matter said.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure