ENERGY
Giga forms EU partnership
Giga Solar Materials Corp (碩禾), which supplies solar conductive paste, yesterday said it has subscribed the corporate bonds of one of Europe’s top three solar companies for 2.29 million euros (US$2.95 million). The deal came after the European Commission is set to announce punitive tariffs on solar panels imported from China early next month. As part of the deal, Giga Solar won a two-year contract to supply the European solar module maker. The company could ship at least 2 million tonnes of aluminum paste and an unspecificed amount of silver paste to the solar module maker. Giga Solar said its European partner raised its solar module shipments by 83 percent in the first quarter of the year from a year ago. Giga Solar shares rose 2.55 percent in Taipei yesterday to NT$281 after the deal was disclosed before the stock market opened.
CURRENCY
Central bank buoys NT dollar
The New Taiwan dollar dropped against the US dollar yesterday, losing NT$0.022 to close at NT$30.050 as the greenback recovered from early losses with the help of the central bank, dealers said. The central bank’s buying of the US dollar showed its determination to maintain the currency above the NT$30 mark in a bid to preserve the nation’s global competitiveness at a time when the Japanese yen and the South Korean won are on a downtrend, dealers said. Before the central bank’s intervention, the US dollar was taking a beating, dealers said.
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
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
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