Ginko International Co (金可國際), which makes contact lenses and lens-care solution, yesterday said that it would take about two weeks to remedy a factory shut down by Chinese regulators.
The Chinese Food and Drug Administration on Monday ordered Ginko to cease production at a plant operated by its subsidiary Jiangsu Horien Contact Lens Co Ltd (江蘇海倫隱形眼鏡) after a non-routine inspection earlier this month revealed breaches of medical device manufacturing rules.
The administration said Ginko’s most serious infraction was that its manufacturing records showed the amount of packaging material the company procured last year — including inventory left over from the previous year — to be less than what was needed to ship its products last year.
Ginko said that efforts to remedy the situation were under way at the plant and it is expected to gain regulatory approval to resume production in two to four weeks.
The company downplayed the closure, saying that it had enough inventory to fulfill orders for up to three months.
The company could also divert production from another China-based subsidiary Hydron Contact Lens Co Ltd (海昌隱形眼鏡) or from plants in Taiwan, it said.
Analysts said a prolonged disruption at Jiangsu Horien Contact Lens, which accounts for 30 percent of the company’s production capacity in China, would significantly slow its growth momentum this year.
The administration said other infractions included inadequate manufacturing recordkeeping for a line of cosmetic contact lens products, while records for sterilization products were also found to be insufficient, as the items used in each batch could not be tracked.
Ginko shares yesterday fell 1.36 percent to NT$254.5 in Taipei trading.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts