Metal components supplier Tong Ming Enterprise Co Ltd (東明) yesterday said it plans to tap into European markets next year, as anti-dumping duties are to expire this year.
“Tong Ming is to expand business in Europe by launching products with higher gross margin,” company spokeswoman Ko Weng-ling (柯文玲) told an investors’ conference in Taipei.
With EU anti-dumping duties on some Chinese stainless steel products to expire this year, shipments of metal components to Europe are expected to increase in the near future, Ko said.
The company, headquartered in China’s Zhejiang Province, mainly manufactures stainless steel fasteners and steel wires for global customers, with one subsidiary in Kaohsiung and 33 in China.
The Kaohsiung unit serves as Tong Ming’s innovation center for its high-added-value products, including steel components used for building solar power plants and planes.
“We have received orders from some companies based in northern Europe and those high-margin products would be used for offshore wind power turbines,” Ko told reporters after the conference.
With production volume this year being relatively flat compared to last year, Tong Ming is working to manufacture more high-margin steel components to raise gross margin, Ko added.
Tong Ming is one of the leading suppliers in China’s steel fastener market, with an annual capacity of more than 50,000 tonnes, according to its Web site.
In the first half of this year, sales of stainless steel fasteners accounted for 67.8 percent of the company’s total sales, while those from steel wires and high-margin products accounted for 21.4 percent and 11 percent respectively.
The company also plans to develop e-commerce services and automated storage systems in a bid to efficiently reduce operating expenses, Ko said.
“With those systems, we could immediately get orders from customers and control our inventories, and might be able to distribute products more quickly,” she said.
The company is optimistic about its sales outlook in the fourth quarter, as nickel prices stabilize in the global market.
Nickel is the most important material for making stainless steel products, accounting for nearly 70 percent of the company’s production costs.
In the first half of this year, the company saw sales decrease 6 percent to NT$2.9 billion (US$92.3 million) annually, influenced by floating material costs.
Net profits during the same period declined 7.7 percent to NT$68.93 million from the previous year, company data showed.
Tong Ming shares gained 2.75 percent to NT$26.15 in Taipei trading yesterday.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high at the end of last month, surpassing the US$600 billion mark for the first time, the central bank said yesterday. Last month, the country’s foreign exchange reserves rose US$5.51 billion from a month earlier to reach US$602.94 billion due to an increase in returns from the central bank’s portfolio management, the movement of other foreign currencies in the portfolio against the US dollar and the bank’s efforts to smooth the volatility of the New Taiwan dollar. Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Eugene Tsai (蔡炯民)said a rate cut cycle launched by the US Federal Reserve
Handset camera lens maker Largan Precision Co (大立光) on Sunday reported a 6.71 percent year-on-year decline in revenue for the third quarter, despite revenue last month hitting the highest level in 11 months. Third-quarter revenue was NT$17.68 billion (US$581.2 million), compared with NT$18.95 billion a year earlier, the company said in a statement. The figure was in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$17.9 billion, but missed the market consensus estimate of NT$18.97 billion. The third-quarter revenue was a 51.44 percent increase from NT$11.67 billion in the second quarter, as the quarter is usually the peak
Nvidia Corp’s major server production partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) reported 10.99 percent year-on-year growth in quarterly sales, signaling healthy demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. Revenue totaled NT$2.06 trillion (US$67.72 billion) in the last quarter, in line with analysts’ projections, a company statement said. On a quarterly basis, revenue was up 14.47 percent. Hon Hai’s businesses cover four primary product segments: cloud and networking, smart consumer electronics, computing, and components and other products. Last quarter, “cloud and networking products delivered strong growth, components and other products demonstrated significant growth, while smart consumer electronics and computing products slightly declined,” compared with the
The US government on Wednesday sanctioned more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, including offshoots of a US chip firm, accusing the businesses of providing illicit support to Iran’s military or proxies. The US Department of Commerce included two subsidiaries of US-based chip distributor Arrow Electronics Inc (艾睿電子) on its so-called entity list published on the federal register for facilitating purchases by Iran’s proxies of US tech. Arrow spokesman John Hourigan said that the subsidiaries have been operating in full compliance with US export control regulations and his company is discussing with the US Bureau of
RSS