Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corp (台化) has no plan to furlough its Changhua plant workers, even though the three boilers of the plant’s coal-fired generators were shut down yesterday.
The company said it would still pay salaries and bonuses to about 1,000 workers at the loss-making plant, which mainly produces artificial fibers such as nylon and rayon.
However, yesterday’s negotiation session between the company, the Changhua County Government and the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) only reached consensus on the protection of labor rights and the company’s compliance with emission standards.
Photo: Wang I-sung, Taipei TImes
The key issue of the company’s license renewal application for its three boilers remains unsolved.
The license for the three boilers expired on Wednesday last week.
The county government has refused to renew the license due to the company’s failure to meet regulatory requirements by lowering the sulfur content in the bituminous coal used in the generators.
Photo: Wang I-sung, Taipei TImes
The county has also demanded that the company apply for a new permit for the boilers, but the company said it should only have to renew the license and promise to reduce sulfur oxide emissions to 25 parts per million (ppm) within four years.
Following a two-hour closed-door meeting at the EPA’s headquarters in Taipei, Environmental Protection Administration Minister Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) said that Formosa Chemicals & Fibre had promised to accept all the emission standards proposed by the country government during the negotiations.
“But the company still refused to apply for a new permit,” Lee said.
Changhua County Commissioner Wei Ming-ku (魏明谷) confirmed that the company agreed that the labor rights of the plant’s workers should be protected, but that there was no budging on the permit issue.
As the company has said it would file an administrative lawsuit over its failed application, Lee said the Changhua plant needs to halt operations for the duration of the transitional procedure.
In the long term, the company must come up with a plan to relocate the plant, as the county government has development plans for the site, including an elevated railway project that is to be completed in 2028, Lee said.
Separately, the EPA reviewed the company’s application for an administrative remedy over the Changhua plant’s industry categorization.
The county sees the plant site as a “special industrial area,” but the company rejects that label.
According to the Air Pollution Control Act (空氣污染防制法), a plant defined as a “special industrial area” must meet higher emission standards than other plants.
The EPA said in a statement that the Changhua plant should be seen as a special industrial area, which would mean its emissions total needs to include the emissions generated by the plant’s manufacturing process as well as what other facilities surrounding the plant produce.
The company has rejected criticism that the 51-year-old Changhua plant is a polluter, saying that the plant has not been fined in the past five years for violating emission standards. The plant is a money loser, the company said, losing a total of NT$1.7 billion (US$54 billion) over the past five years.
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
DAMAGE REPORT: Global central banks are assessing war-driven inflation risks as the law of unintended consequences careens around the world, spiking oil prices Central banks from Washington to London and from Jakarta to Taipei are about to make their first assessments of economic damage after more than two weeks of conflict between the US and Iran. Decisions this week encompassing every member of the G7 and eight of the world’s 10 most-traded currency jurisdictions are likely to confirm to investors that the specter of a new inflation shock is already worrying enough to prompt heightened caution. The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to do exactly what everyone anticipated weeks ahead of its March 17-18 policy gathering: hold rates steady. The narrative surrounding that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) share of the global foundry market rose to almost 70 percent last year amid booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI), market information advisory firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Thursday. The contract chipmaker posted US$122.54 billion in revenue, up 36.1 percent from a year earlier, accounting for 69.9 percent of the global market, TrendForce said. Its share was up from 64.4 percent in 2024, it said. TSMC’s closest rival, Samsung Electronics, was a distant second, posting US$12.63 billion in sales, down 3.9 percent from a year earlier, for a 7.2 percent share of the global market. In the
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
RSS