CSBC Corp, Taiwan (台灣國際造船) said delivery of a US$150 million cargo ship would be delayed by about three months due to damage caused by Typhoon Meranti.
The nation’s only publicly traded shipbuilder said that the 14,000 twenty-foot-equivalent unit (TEU) cargo ship commissioned by Canada’s Seaspan Corp would be delivered in December instead of this month, as the vessel sustained damage when the typhoon tore through the company’s shipyard in Kaohsiung on Wednesday last week, it said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Friday.
All 38 10cm-thick cables that secured the ship to its moorings snapped under the strain of gusts, sending the ship adrift, the company said.
The ship could not be reined in, despite three hours of efforts by six tugboats, and crashed into four overhead cranes at a dock operated by Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運), with its bridge getting stuck under one of the cranes, the company added.
No one was injured in the incident, it said.
CSBC said that its own cranes and equipment also sustained collision damage during the typhoon.
“We are in negotiations with our builder’s risk insurer, and expect to complete repairs and resume operations shortly,” the company said.
CSBC added that it does not expect to pay a high deductible.
In 2013, Seaspan commissioned CSBC to build five 14,000 TEU cargo ships, of which three have been delivered. The vessel damaged by last week’s typhoon was the fourth.
CSBC reported that aggregate sales in the first eight months declined 18.04 percent annually to NT$11.9 billion (US$375.5 million) amid a global downturn in global trade and the container shipping sector.
In related news, CSBC and other shipbuilders and suppliers showcased their capabilities at the Kaohsiung International Maritime and Defense Industry Expo — which took place from Friday last week to yesterday — in response to the government’s plan to build an indigenous submarine fleet.
CSBC unveiled a model of its submarine design, while several other suppliers exhibited control systems, high-tensile steel for hull construction and low-noise mechanical propulsion systems.
The exhibition drew more than 50,000 visitors, organizers said.
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
US actor Matthew McConaughey has filed recordings of his image and voice with US patent authorities to protect them from unauthorized usage by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, a representative said earlier this week. Several video clips and audio recordings were registered by the commercial arm of the Just Keep Livin’ Foundation, a non-profit created by the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Camila, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office database. Many artists are increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled use of their image via generative AI since the rollout of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools. Several US states have adopted
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
KEEPING UP: The acquisition of a cleanroom in Taiwan would enable Micron to increase production in a market where demand continues to outpace supply, a Micron official said Micron Technology Inc has signed a letter of intent to buy a fabrication site in Taiwan from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion to expand its production of memory chips. Micron would take control of the P5 site in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) and plans to ramp up DRAM production in phases after the transaction closes in the second quarter, the company said in a statement on Saturday. The acquisition includes an existing 12 inch fab cleanroom of 27,871m2 and would further position Micron to address growing global demand for memory solutions, the company said. Micron expects the transaction to
RSS