Canon Inc, the world’s biggest camera maker, began construction on Sunday of a new plant in Greater Taichung to meet higher demand for the company’s products.
Market analysts believe that the combined investment in the new plant, along with another for which construction is slated to begin in August, will exceed NT$30 billion (US$1.05 billion), according to local media reports.
Canon will invest NT$11 billion in its new factory in the Taichung Export Processing Zone, with construction slated to be completed by the end of May next year.
The Taichung plant will begin production in the second half of next year, employing 3,000 workers.
Rising demand for digital single-lens-reflex cameras in recent years prompted the company to decide last year to expand its production in Taiwan, the reports said.
Since the establishment of its first Taiwanese branch in the zone 40 years ago, Canon has brought both capital and technology to the country, making central Taiwan a hub for the optics industry, Canon Taiwan chairman Kenji Yoshida said at a ground-breaking ceremony for the new plant.
The second new plant that will begin being built in August will be located in the Chiayi Dapumei Intelligent Industrial Park.
Construction of that plant will be completed in July next year and once operational, it will require 3,000 to 4,000 employees, the reports said.
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