Deutsche Post DHL, one of the world’s leading mail and logistics services groups, plans to invest US$132 million over the next two years to expand its coverage of intra-China lines, as well as intercontinental routes from China.
The investment will boost the company’s revenue in the Asia-Pacific region from 20 percent to 30 percent of its global revenue by 2017, a company official said yesterday.
“The potential for growth in Asia will be higher than that in the US and Europe in the near future,” Deutsche Post DHL chief executive officer Frank Appel told a media briefing on his first visit to Taipei.
Despite the sluggish global economic sentiment this year, the group’s revenue in the Asia-Pacific region still showed double-digit annual growth in the first six months, evidence supporting Appel’s view.
The greater China region has been one of the most important markets for DHL, following the group’s launch of its biggest express hub in Asia — the US$175 million DHL Express North Asia hub at the Shanghai Pudong International Airport — last week, Appel said.
Therefore, the company plans to invest a further US$132 million to add eight dedicated aircraft to serve high-demand routes in China, as well as those between Shanghai and North Asia, Europe and the US over the next two years.
DHL Express chief executive officer for the Asia-Pacific region Jerry Hsu (許克威) said the investment plan would proceed in stages, with routes between Shanghai and major North Asian cities scheduled to be launched by the end of this year at the earliest.
The investment plan will further drive up the company’s service quality in Northern Asia, including in Taiwan, Hsu said.
“The launch of the hub in Shanghai will lead to earlier delivery from Taiwan,” Hsu said. “This may help the company expand presence in Taiwan.”
As for the investment plan in Taiwan, the shipping company said it planned to expand its number of warehouses in the near future to deal with higher demand in the company’s supply chain unit, with possible building locations including Taichung and Taoyuan’s Guanyin (觀音) Township.
The group’s revenue totaled 52.8 billion euros (US$64.7 million) last year, up 2.8 percent from a year earlier, a company statement showed.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”