CTCI Corp (中鼎工程), the nation’s largest construction and power engineering service provider, yesterday said it aims to solidify its presence in the US this year in a bid to cope with weakening demand at home.
Revenues from Taiwanese customers made up more than half of the firm’s total revenue last year, while Southeast Asia and the Middle East accounted for 21 percent each, company data showed.
“It is the company’s priority to secure more orders from petrochemical companies based in Texas and Louisiana” a company official said yesterday.
The official, who declined to be named, said the US President Donald Trump’s aim of taking manufacturing jobs to the US would help stimulate demand in the US.
The firm would also benefit from its client Formosa Plastics Group’s (台塑集團) expansion in the US, as the group’s capacity expansion in Taiwan has stalled, the official said.
Formosa Plastics, the nation’s biggest industrial conglomerate, plans to build an ethylene plant in Texas and is likely to boost investments there, considering lower fuel costs from shale gas in the US.
Low-cost ethane, a natural gas derived from shale gas, is about 50 percent cheaper than naphtha, the official said.
As business opportunities grow in the US, the company plans to join a bid to build a petrochemical complex by a joint venture between ExxonMobil Chemical Co and Saudi Basic Industries Corp, the company said.
The proposed ethane cracker, which would be a multibillion-dollar investment, would have an annual capacity of 1.8 million tonnes, the company said.
The company is also seeking to increase its presence in Southeast Asian nations, eying robust infrastructure demand there, the company said.
Most business opportunities are linked to electricity, transportation and energy sectors, CTCI said.
The firm said it is considering to bid for a power plant construction project in Malaysia and another one in Vietnam this year.
In the first quarter of this year, the company posted accumulative sales of NT$15.18 billion (US$501.45 million), an 11.35 percent increase from a year earlier.
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