Everest Textile Co (宏遠興業), which makes fabrics and garments, yesterday said two new plants in Ethiopia and the US are scheduled to start operations in the first half of this year.
The plant in Ethiopia is to manufacture garments for the company’s brand name customers from Europe, while the US facility is to supply knitted fabrics and garments to customers in the US, the firm said.
The two new factories are expected to increase the sales contribution from garments, which currently generate less than 2 percent of the company’s total sales, an Everest official said by telephone.
Revenue from woven and knitted fabrics accounts for more than 80 percent of the company’s total sales, while textured yarns generate nearly 10 percent, company data showed.
The official, who declined to be named, said the company plans to build another plant in Haiti because of lower labor costs.
“We have to keep seeking overseas sites for new factories, as the fabric manufacturing process is quite labor-intensive,” he told the Taipei Times.
Everest operates three plants in Taiwan, China and Thailand.
Everest’s local peers, including Lealea Enterprise Co (力麗) and Eclat Textile Co (儒鴻), also plan to accelerate overseas capacity expansion plans this year.
Lealea, which mainly produces textured polyester yarn, has approved a plan to invest as much as US$50 million in its first overseas factory in Indonesia.
The new plant is scheduled to begin operations in the first half of this year, with a target capacity of 4 million yards of polyester yarn per year, Lealea spokesman Chen Han-ching (陳漢卿) said by telephone yesterday.
The plant is to distribute about half of its products to customers in Indonesia, a nation of 255 million people, Chen said.
Lealea is also considering building another plant in Vietnam because of lower tariffs on exports to the EU, he added.
Local media reported that Eclat plans to expand production capacity in Vietnam after dissolving its wholly owned clothing plants in China last month.
Two new plants in Vietnam are scheduled to begin operations in the first and third quarters of this year respectively, and are expected to manufacture about 950,000 articles of clothing per month, boosting Eclat’s capacity by 20 percent annually, local media reported.
Shiina Ito has had fewer Chinese customers at her Tokyo jewelry shop since Beijing issued a travel warning in the wake of a diplomatic spat, but she said she was not concerned. A souring of Tokyo-Beijing relations this month, following remarks by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi about Taiwan, has fueled concerns about the impact on the ritzy boutiques, noodle joints and hotels where holidaymakers spend their cash. However, businesses in Tokyo largely shrugged off any anxiety. “Since there are fewer Chinese customers, it’s become a bit easier for Japanese shoppers to visit, so our sales haven’t really dropped,” Ito
The number of Taiwanese working in the US rose to a record high of 137,000 last year, driven largely by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) rapid overseas expansion, according to government data released yesterday. A total of 666,000 Taiwanese nationals were employed abroad last year, an increase of 45,000 from 2023 and the highest level since the COVID-19 pandemic, data from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) showed. Overseas employment had steadily increased between 2009 and 2019, peaking at 739,000, before plunging to 319,000 in 2021 amid US-China trade tensions, global supply chain shifts, reshoring by Taiwanese companies and
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) Chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) and the company’s former chairman, Mark Liu (劉德音), both received the Robert N. Noyce Award -- the semiconductor industry’s highest honor -- in San Jose, California, on Thursday (local time). Speaking at the award event, Liu, who retired last year, expressed gratitude to his wife, his dissertation advisor at the University of California, Berkeley, his supervisors at AT&T Bell Laboratories -- where he worked on optical fiber communication systems before joining TSMC, TSMC partners, and industry colleagues. Liu said that working alongside TSMC
TECHNOLOGY DAY: The Taiwanese firm is also setting up a joint venture with Alphabet Inc on robots and plans to establish a firm in Japan to produce Model A EVs Manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday announced a collaboration with ChatGPT developer OpenAI to build next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and strengthen its local supply chain in the US to accelerate the deployment of advanced AI systems. Building such an infrastructure in the US is crucial for strengthening local supply chains and supporting the US in maintaining its leading position in the AI domain, Hon Hai said in a statement. Through the collaboration, OpenAI would share its insights into emerging hardware needs in the AI industry with Hon Hai to support the company’s design and development work, as well
RSS