Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠), the world’s fourth-largest ethylene glycol (EG) producer, expects the Ministry of Economic Affairs to withdraw an order to suspend operations at five of the company’s petrochemical plants, as the suspension would have a negative impact on the whole industry.
Five petrochemical plants operated by Nan Ya have been ordered by the Yunlin County Government to suspend operations for safety inspections after two fires last month at one of the plants.
“The matter raises uncertainties about the company’s revenues in the second half of this year,” Nan Ya chairman Wu Chin-jen (吳欽仁) told reporters after the company’s annual shareholders meeting yesterday.
Nan Ya has appealed to both the county and the ministry to allow it to resume operations at the four factories that were not involved in the fires last month.
Nan Ya president Wu Chia-chau (吳嘉昭) yesterday said the shutdown of its five factories would have a negative influence on both upstream and downstream companies in the industry, which largely rely on Nan Ya’s supplies of EG in the production of key textile materials and petrochemical intermediaries.
Nan Ya’s annual capacity of EG accounts for 9 percent of total global production, with its Mailiao (麥寮) and Haifeng (海豐) plants churning out 180 tonnes a year, the company said.
Without the company’s production, local polyester makers would have difficulties purchasing substantial supplies of EG, weakening their capacity to produce products, a downstream company’s official said.
Nan Ya is a core member of the industrial conglomerate Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團). Earlier this month, Formosa Plastics said the closure of the five factories would cause a total loss of NT$26 million (US$900,000) a day for Nan Ya.
Yesterday, a plan was approved by shareholders to pay a cash dividend of NT$4.7 per common share, based on last year’s net income of NT$40.97 billion, or NT$5.22 per share.
In the first five months of this year, the company’s revenues totaled NT$97.54 billion, up 7.69 percent from a year earlier.
Shares of Nan Ya fell 2.17 percent to close at NT$76.5 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, while the benchmark TAIEX rose 0.78 percent.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to