Domestic land developers and construction companies are adjusting business strategies to improve earnings and diversify risk as the macroeconomic environment turns increasingly unfriendly, a report by the Chinese-language Housing Monthly said yesterday.
Advancetek Enterprise Co (名軒開發), an affiliate of Lih Pao Construction Co (麗寶建設), will soon complete construction on a commercial property complex in Shanghai, China, the report said.
The complex, with five buildings on 13,700 ping (45,289m2) of land, is Lih Pao’s latest attempt to expand into the commercial property market in China after focusing on residential housing development in that country, Ni Tsu-jen (倪子仁), spokesman of the monthly publication, said by telephone.
Lih Pao aims to turn lower floors of the buildings into retail space and higher floors into office space to generate rental income, Ni said.
The developer won the plot in China’s prime business district for NT$6.84 billion (US$225.23 million) in March this year in a continued bid to strengthen its presence in the city, Ni said.
Cathay Real Estate Development Co (國泰建設), an affiliate of Cathay Financial Holdings Co (國泰金控), will extend its clout to northern Hsinchu County for the first time after recently acquiring a 1,472 ping plot of land near the high-speed railway station in Jhubei City (竹北), the report said.
The 47-year-old firm had been concentrating on property development projects in the nation’s urban downtown areas, playing an active part in boosting their prices, the report said, adding that the future project in Hsinchu was likely to set a new high for neighboring areas.
Other construction companies have sought to improve earnings by expanding into the hospitality industry, the report said.
King’s Town Construction Co (京城建設), the largest land developer in southern Taiwan, earlier made known its intention to spend NT$2.5 billion on building a hotel next to the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium in Kenting (墾丁), Pingtung County. Construction on the 110-room vacation hotel is scheduled to start in 2013, Ni said.
Prince Housing and Development Corp (太子建設) and Kindom Construction Corp (冠德建設) have made similar expansion moves by investing in W Hotel in downtown Taipei and Global Malls (環球購物中心) in New Taipei City (新北市) respectively, Ni said.
Meanwhile, other developers consider it safer to hold onto cash amid the economic uncertainty, the report said.
That consideration led Kee Tai Properties (基泰建設) to sell its cemetery plot in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) for NT$3.13 billion and a real-estate property in Shilin District (士林) for NT$829 million earlier this year, Ni 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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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