Wire harness maker BizLink Holding Inc (貿聯) yesterday said it plans to spend between US$12 million and US$15 million this year — compared with US$12 million last year — mainly on capacity expansion.
“We are working on several capacity expansion plans to meet rising demand from our global customers, especially those in the electric car industry,” BizLink chief executive officer Felix Teng (鄧劍華) told a news conference in Taipei.
The company plans to build a new plant in China’s Kunshan to fulfill Tesla Motors Inc’s orders. The US electric car maker is scheduled to begin production of its lower-priced compact sedan Model 3 in the middle of the year and start deliveries next year.
BizLink operates one plant in China’s Shenzhen and another one in Kunshan to manufacture products for Tesla, with an annual capacity of nearly 270,000 wire harnesses.
The new Kunshan plant is scheduled to start operations by the end of the third quarter, with an annual capacity of 230,000, the company said.
Tesla contributed nearly 12 percent to BizLink’s total sales last year, company data showed.
BizLink is also considering expanding the capacity of its aftermarket electric car components, including electric harnesses for chargers and energy storage equipment.
The company plans to add new production lines at a Malaysian plant — which mainly manufactures wire harnesses and cable assemblies for the aerospace and defense industries — this year, Teng said.
Furthermore, BizLink is seeking acquisition opportunities in other industries, in a bid to quickly broaden its client base and enhance its technologies.
The company said it is in talks with several companies in the automotive and optical fiber industries, without elaborating.
In January, BizLink announced plans to acquire a 100 percent stake in the electrical appliance assembly business of German-based Leoni AG group.
The 50 million euro (US$52.67 million) deal is scheduled to close in the first half of the year, the company 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