Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團) yesterday said a partial production suspension at some units of its Yunlin petrochemical complex due to a power failure on Wednesday could cut the combined sales of its four core companies by up to NT$9 billion (US$301 million) this month.
The four — Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑), Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠), Formosa Chemicals and Fibre Corp (台灣化纖) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) — reported combined sales of NT$119.66 billion last month, down 16.1 percent from April, according to companies’ stock exchange filings on June 4.
The FPG said that, based on its preliminary estimate, the interruption at factories in the Mailiao (麥寮) and Haifeng (海豐) compounds within the Yunlin complex could cause a loss of about NT$100 million to Formosa Plastics Corp.
The incident would also cause a NT$100 million loss to Nan Ya Plastics, the nation’s largest plastics maker, and to Formosa Chemicals, which produces aromatics and styrenics, while not affecting Formosa Petrochemical, the nation’s second-largest refiner, FPG said in a statement yesterday.
The share prices of the four companies came under pressure yesterday after local media reported the impact of the production suspension might cause losses of between NT$1 billion and NT$4 billion.
Shares of Formosa Plastics Corp fell 0.37 percent to close at NT$79.8 and Nan Ya Plastics shares dipped 2.09 percent to NT$56.1. Formosa Chemicals shares dropped 0.75 percent to NT$79.6, while those of Formosa Petrochemical dropped 1.31 percent to NT$82.6.
The group said it started restoring electricity to the affected factories at 2pm on Wednesday, after it completed safety inspections on the sites that had been forced to shut down by the 11:52am outage.
While electricity supply was fully restored by yesterday, “Most factories are expected to return to normal operation within two days,” the group said in the statement.
“However, some other factories with complex manufacturing process are likely to restart in four to seven days given safety considerations,” FPG said, referring to the No. 2 and No. 3 olefins plants as well as the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 aromatics plants.
The temporary power outage was caused by short circuit in the double busbar circuit system in the petrochemical complex’s public utility area, the group 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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts