Industrial conglomerate Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團) is planning to build petrochemical plants and naphtha crackers in Gulei, in China’s Fujian Province, eyeing its proximity to the Chinese market, an official said yesterday.
“China has a large market for petrochemical products and we need to provide raw materials for our petrochemical plant in Ningbo, China,” a Formosa Plastics Corp (FPC, 台塑) official said by telephone.
FPC, a flagship company of the group and the nation’s largest producer of polyvinyl chloride, is responsible for the project.
Local media reported on Sunday that the total investment in Gulei would be US$13 billion.
The official, who declined to be named, did not confirm the figure, saying that the investment project is still at a very early stage and will require approval from Taipei and Beijing.
The company would like to produce ethylene and propene, and to conduct naphtha cracking in Gulei, if regulators on both sides of the Taiwan Strait approve, he said.
Currently, the government still prohibits Taiwanese companies from investing in naphtha crackers in China, the official said, adding that the company hopes the government would ease the restriction in the near future.
Taiwanese companies and Chinese companies in Fujian would each provide 50 percent of the funds for the planned investment project, the official said.
In view of the large size of the investment, the group will also invite other Taiwanese investors to join the initiative, he said.
FPC will not be the only company under the group to participate in the project because it will require the technologies of other FPG units to manufacture all the desired products in Gulei, he said.
Formosa Plastics Corp posted NT$50.04 billion (US$1.69 billion) in revenue for the first three months of the year, down 5.97 percent from the NT$53.22 billion posted a year ago because of lower product prices and demand, the official said.
The outlook for this quarter would depend on the volatility of global oil prices, he said.
FPC shares fell 1.66 percent to NT$71 yesterday, underperforming the TAIEX, which rose 0.1 percent.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last