Local LED lighting manufacturers yesterday urged the government to set stricter quality standards for a nationwide project to replace mercury-vapor street lamps with energy-efficient LED lamps to prevent price-cutting competition.
“Fierce price-cutting competition would sacrifice local manufacturers’ interests and would be adverse to Taiwan’s LED industry development,” a Taiwan LED Lighting Industry Association (台灣LED照明產業聯盟) official, who declined to be named, told the Taipei Times after the association held a closed-door meeting with Minister of Economic Affairs John Deng (鄧振中) in the Hsinchu Science Park.
The association, headed by David Su (蘇峰正), who is also the chairman of Taiwanese LED chipmaker Lextar Electronics Corp (隆達電子), said during the meeting that some local firms might use low-cost Chinese LED street lamps if the government does not set the bar higher for the bids, the official said.
Photo: CNA
The Cabinet approved in November a NT$5.49 billion (US$175.3 million) project to help local governments replace 692,000 mercury street lamps with LED lights by the end of next year.
Local LED lightning makers should tender bids for the project to local governments in accordance with the Cabinet’s project requirements, the Bureau of Energy said.
“LED companies need not worry about quality standards for the bids, as we already raised the bar to ensure product quality,” Bureau of Energy official Lin Kong-yuan (林公元), who was also present at the meeting, said by telephone.
Lin said the Cabinet requires local governments to award contracts based on the most advantageous bid, rather than the lowest, to ensure product quality.
In addition, the project requires bidders to use components that are 99-percent locally made to make sure it will help Taiwan’s green energy development and benefit Taiwanese LED makers, Lin said.
The association official said the nation’s LED manufacturers face international tariff barriers, especially in emerging markets. High-tariffs affect companies’ gross margins and their competitiveness in overseas markets, the official said.
Quoting Su, the official said that Taiwan’s upstream LED manufacturers enjoy a leading position in the global marketplace, while downstream firms account for less than 5 percent, because many of them are small or medium-sized firms with diverse LED lighting applications.
Su told Deng that the nation’s downstream LED manufacturers need the government’s help the most, adding that the government should assist the companies with brand promotion and the expansion of business opportunities in overseas markets.
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
The EU and US are nearing an agreement to coordinate on producing and securing critical minerals, part of a push to break reliance on Chinese supplies. The potential deal would create incentives, such as minimum prices, that could advantage non-Chinese suppliers, according to a draft of an “action plan” seen by Bloomberg. The EU and US would also cooperate on standards, investments and joint projects, as well as coordinate on any supply disruptions by countries like China. The two sides are additionally seeking other “like-minded partners” to join a multicountry accord to help create these new critical mineral supply chains, which feed into
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
RSS