HEAVY INDUSTRY
Bombardier cuts UK jobs
Train maker Bombardier is cutting more than 1,400 jobs at its plant in Derby, England, after losing out to German group Siemens for the Thameslink cross-London rail upgrade contract. The Canadian company, which also makes aircraft, said it would cut 446 permanent jobs and 983 temporary jobs from its 3,000-strong Derby workforce as a result of missing out on the Thameslink contract and the completion of its current workload, which includes metro cars for London Underground. Bombardier said all its contracts, except for cars for some Underground lines, would be complete by the end of September.
AUTOMOBILES
Toyota cuts Brazil output
Toyota Motor Corp is suspending output at its units in Brazil and Argentina this month because of delays in the supply of auto parts after March’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan, according to an e-mailed statement. The company will suspend operations at its Indaiatuba, Brazil, plant on Friday and at its Zarate, Argentina, plant on July 15, 20, 21 and 22. The measure won’t affect jobs or its expansion plans for the region, Toyota said.
CEMENT
Anhui Conch picks Indonesia
Anhui Conch Cement Co (安徽海螺水泥) has signed a preliminary agreement to invest an estimated US$2.35 billion to build four cement plants in Indonesia, the China Business News reported yesterday. Products made by the company’s first overseas factories will be sold in Indonesia and exported to neighboring countries, the newspaper reported, citing Anhui Conch’s deputy general manager Zhang Mingjing (章明靜). The Chinese firm also plans to build coal-fired power plants to supply electricity to the cement factories in Indonesia, Zhang said.
INVESTMENT
China invests in Brazil
China is expected to pour US$9 billion into Brazil this year, with half for investment in the country’s high-tech sector, state media said yesterday, citing a senior Brazilian trade official. Chinese investment in Brazil’s technology industries will hit US$4.5 billion this year, Brazilian Deputy Minister of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade Alessandro Teixeira said in comment carried by the China Daily. “Seventy percent of the trade between Brazil and China is basically commodities,” Teixeira said. “But we are keen to improve commercial relations in medium and high-end technology.”
AUTOMOBILES
GM’s China sales set record
General Motors Co says its ventures in China sold a record 1.27 million vehicles in the first half of the year, though growth slowed sharply from the double-digit pace of recent years. GM said in a statement that its first-half sales rose 5.3 percent from the same period last year, as sales by its mini-vehicle venture SAIC-GM-Wuling fell 5.4 percent to 641,324 units. However, GM’s flagship joint venture, Shanghai GM saw sales jump 25 percent from the year before to a record 600,002 units.
ECONOMY
RBA holds rates steady
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) kept official interest rates steady at 4.75 percent yesterday, citing slower global growth due to Japan’s March earthquake, European debt problems and surging commodity prices. The bank left the official cash rate unchanged for the seventh time since last November, saying it believed domestic growth was “unlikely to be as strong as earlier forecast.”
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],”
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
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