TYC Brother Industrial Co (堤維西), which makes lighting products used in vehicles, plans to spend NT$150 million (US$5 million) this month on building a factory for making original equipment manufacturing (OEM) products for cars.
On Thursday next week, TYC is to break ground for a two-floor factory on 2,300 ping (7,600m2) of land in the Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學工業園區).
The capacity expansion project, which is TYC’s first in the past 12 years, is expected to be completed by the end of this year, chairman Wu Chun-chi (吳俊佶) told reporters yesterday.
Because of capacity constraints amid growing demand, the company has had to extend the delivery time of its products to 40 days, up from 21 days on average, Wu said.
He said the company would relocate its production lines for OEM products to the new site, freeing part of the space at its current factory in Greater Tainan for capacity expansion to accommodate growing demand for its aftermarket products.
Once the expansion project is completed, TYC’s Greater Tainan factory is to manufacture aftermarket automobile lamps, while its new factory in the science park will make OEM products, Wu said.
“We need to lower costs for our aftermarket products, while raising the quality of our products in the OEM market and delivering them to our clients on time,” Wu said.
TYC will also relocate its subsidiary Juoku Technology Co (儒億科技), which makes parts of automobile lamps for TYC’s OEM business, close to the new factory between August and September, Wu said.
TYC holds a 76.8 percent stake in Juoku, it said.
Currently supplying OEM products to Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) for Mini Cooper cars and lamp maker Osram GmbH, the company aims to increase sales in the OEM market to NT$200 million a year within the next three years from the current NT$150 million a year, Wu said.
From January through last month, the company posted revenue growth of 16.99 percent to NT$7.79 billion, up from NT$6.66 billion the previous year.
The company aims to see revenue increase by 20 percent this year.
Net profit was NT$154.91 million, or NT$0.5 per share, in the first quarter of the year, up 85.52 percent from NT$83.5 million, or NT$0.27 per share, a year ago.
TYC has set a target to report pretax profit of NT$2 per share this year.
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