UPS International Inc (UPS) would bring the same service standard to Taiwan’s rural areas as it expands its service coverage in the nation, a local executive said yesterday.
UPS said it would expand its same-day, next-flight-out services to smaller-sized businesses in Chiayi and Yunlin that rely on export markets, such as Europe and North America.
Parcel pickup times for same-day-deliveries have also been extended from noon to the afternoon, the company said.
Previously, UPS had relied on local vendors for door-to-door parcel pickups in rural regions, but the arrangement had many limitations depending on each partner’s capabilities, UPS International Inc’s Taiwan branch president Wayne Pi (畢中偉) told reporters.
To enable the service upgrade, UPS has forged more comprehensive ties with local vendors, Pi said.
Under the new arrangement, UPS would select one exclusive partner for each local market, who would be brought under the fold of the US-headquartered logistics giant.
“We would provide training as well as access to the company’s operating procedures and backend systems,” Pi said, adding that the selected partners’ delivery staff and vehicles would don UPS’ signature brown liveries.
However, in exchange for a guaranteed sales volume, the partner would work exclusively under the UPS flag and cannot take on new clients independently.
The new arrangement is designed to expand UPS’ presence in Taiwan without adding significant headcount, Pi said.
It has been implemented in 16 townships and 184 postal codes in Changhua, and would be extended to Chiayi and Yunlin before the end of this year, UPS said.
This would expand UPS’ service coverage in Taiwan by 72.9 percent and its fleet of delivery vehicles is to rise by 25 percent, Pi said.
He added that the new arrangement would benefit many of the nation’s small-scale specialty suppliers in rural areas which have been hampered by a lack of access to international delivery services.
These include makers of high-end cycling accessories and replica airsoft guns, whose products are shipped in small volumes across the globe, Pi 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