Garret Popcorn Holding Co, Scan-D Corp (詩肯) and Decathlon SA are among 66 overseas companies that have pledged to invest and create jobs in Taiwan over the next three years, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
Overseas investors are to bring a total of NT$156 billion (US$4.76 billion) worth of investment, creating more than 15,000 jobs, the ministry said at an annual investment conference in Taipei.
“Eleven of the 66 overseas companies are to invest more than NT$5 billion each,” Minister of Economic Affairs John Deng (鄧振中) said.
Decathlon, the world’s second-largest sporting goods retailer, is to expand its presence in Taiwan by investing NT$12.6 billion in launching 15 more local outlets over the next three years, Department of Investment Services Director-General Vivian Lien (連玉蘋) said.
Decathlon set up a subsidiary in Taiwan in 1990, purchasing materials from local suppliers worth NT$3.5 billion per year. The company has invested NT$12 billion in Taiwan in the past five years, Lien said.
“That a French company keeps investing here shows confidence in the Taiwanese market,” Lien told reporters on the sidelines of the media event.
Pharmaceutical company Merck Group has pledged to invest more than NT$5 billion in Taiwan and is to purchase semiconductor and pharmaceutical-related products from domestic suppliers, Lien said.
To provide faster services to Taiwan’s semiconductor clients, SunEdison Semiconductor Ltd yesterday inked a letter of intent with the ministry.
Lien said the US company promised to invest more than NT$5 billion in Taiwan, including setting up a research and development center.
Scan-D, which operates 82 Scanteak furniture stores and 12 Scan Living outlets in Taiwan, plans to invest NT$800 million to expand its number of stores. The Singaporean firm also plans to open between 10 and 15 Scan Cafe stores next year.
US company Garrett Popcorn initially plans to invest NT$10 million in its first shop in Taiwan later this year in the Taipei 101 Mall, Garrett Popcorn International business development director Lusia Redompta said.
“We will evaluate business in our first store in Taiwan before deciding whether to open more stores in the nation,” Redompta said.
To ensure the quality of its handmade popcorn, she said all materials would be imported from the US, while chefs hired in Taiwan would complete a one-month training course in the company’s Asia office in Singapore.
“We have to be careful and make sure that every shop that we open is very successful in Taiwan,” Redompta said.
Garrett Popcorn’s products are priced between US$22 and US$25 per bucket in the US, but the prices for its Taiwan store have not been finalized, she said.
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
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],”
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day