Two Japanese companies have agreed on deals to develop advanced coal-fired power plants in Malaysia and Myanmar as part of a Japanese government drive to export energy-efficiency technology to emerging markets, a report said yesterday.
The Japanese government is seeking to promote the export of ultra-supercritical pressure (USC) technology power plants to meet expected growing demand in emerging economies, the Nikkei Industrial Journal business daily said.
USC power plants are the most efficient in the world, generating hotter, higher-pressure steam than conventional units, resulting in significantly lower carbon dioxide emissions, Nikkei said.
Japanese trading firm Mitsui Group has agreed to oversee the construction and operation of a plant in Malaysia with two USC generators designed to produce 1 million kilowatts of energy each, the business daily said.
Mitsui, partnering with Malaysian government-affiliated infrastructure group 1Malaysia Development Berhad, is expected to sign a formal contract with the Malaysian government by this summer, Nikkei said.
The project is valued at about ¥360 billion (US$3.48 billion) and come online in 2018. Under the plan, Toshiba Corp will deliver steam turbines to the plant to be built in Jimah, south of Kuala Lumpur, while Japanese heavy equipment maker IHI Corp will provide boilers, Nikkei said.
In addition, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp has reached a deal to extend loans for a ¥260 billion USC power generation project in Myanmar, the daily said.
Japanese heavy machinery makers will take part in the construction of the plant, which has an expected output of 1.28 million kilowatts in cooperation with Thai engineering firm Toyo-Thai Corp Public Co Ltd, it said.
The two companies are to start construction by the end of this year and aim to start the plant in 2018.
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