China Steel Corp (中鋼), the nation’s only integrated steelmaker, yesterday said the construction of its Vietnamese subsidiary with an annual steel production capacity of 1.2 million tonnes was complete.
The US$1.15 billion China Steel Sumikin Vietnam Joint Stock Co (CSVC, 中鋼住金), a Taiwan-Japan joint venture, will help China Steel expand its market in Vietnam and reach other Southeast Asian countries, company vice president Steve Lee (李慶超) said yesterday.
With a population of 91 million people, average steel consumption per person in Vietnam is less than 100kg, lower than the global average of 200kg, Lee said.
Photo: CNA
During its trial run last month, the plant produced 10,000 tonnes of steel, Lee said.
The plant is expected to operate at full capacity in 2015, when its four production lines will be able to churn out 500,000 tonnes of cold-rolled sheets and coils, 300,000 tonnes of zinc-galvanized sheets, 200,000 tonnes of electrical sheets and 200,000 tonnes of pickled and oiled steel coils a year, he added.
China Steel said the Vietnamese unit would supply products for the construction and automobile sectors, as well as items used in home appliances.
The plant is expected to generate revenue of between NT$24 billion (US$817 million) and NT$30 billion a year in 2015, and it will take two or three years for it to break even, Lee said.
The plant will be competiting against another plant making cold-rolled sheets and coils built by POSCO, located in the same area as CSVC and with the capacity to produce 1.2 million tonnes of steel a year, Lee said.
“It is better for us to compete with POSCO than allowing POSCO to be the largest steel company in Vietnam,” another vice president, Lin Chung-yi (林中義), said.
“Building a factory in Vietnam can allow us to avoid the tariff of 7.5 percent to 15 percent for shipping products to ASEAN countries,” he said.
The company will also compete with Formosa Plastics Group’s (台塑集團) US$9.5 billion steel venture in Vietnam in three years.
The under-construction Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corp (台塑河靜鋼鐵興業) is forecast to have an initial annual production of 8.5 million tonnes when it is completed in 2015.
China Steel holds a 51 percent stake in its Vietnamese venture, with Sumitomo Metal Industries Ltd owning a 30 percent stake. Sumitomo Corp, Nippon Steel & Sumikin Bussan Corp and Formosa Ha Tinh each has a 5 percent stake in the venture, while Chun Yuan Steel Industry Co (春源鋼鐵) and Hsin Kuang Steel Co (新光鋼鐵) have 2 percent each.
Separately, China Steel yesterday reported a pretax profit of NT$5.83 billion last quarter, down from NT$6.53 billion the previous quarter.
The company did not provide comparative figure from the previous year.
Lin said the quarter-on-quarter decline was caused by increasing expenditure on annual maintenance for one of its four furnaces last quarter.
The company’s pretax profit last quarter was higher than a year ago as the market sentiment was better this year, he added.
The company posted revenue of NT$87.26 billion last quarter, up from NT$84.7 billion a quarter ago and NT$83.81 billion a year ago.
Lin said the company’s revenue this quarter is likely to rise from last quarter as steel prices increase.
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],”