Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠), the nation’s largest plastics maker, yesterday gave a relatively optimistic outlook for the rest of the year, supported by rising demand for copper products, oil and ethylene glycol.
“The demand for electric material and ethylene glycol has been improving,” chairman Wu Chia-chau (吳嘉昭) told reporters on the sidelines of an annual shareholders’ meeting in Taipei, citing strong growth momentum in the global electric-vehicle market.
Nan Ya has set a sales target of 69.65 million copper-clad laminates and 2.35 million tonnes of ethylene glycol this year, the firm said.
Wu said that Nan Ya is working on four capacity expansion projects this year, as part of its near-term efforts to sustain competitiveness and meet growing demand.
The company’s board last month approved a NT$5.37 billion (US$176.6 million) proposal to build a new plant in Taiwan to expand production capacity for copper foil, aiming to satisfy increasing global demand for lithium-ion batteries, a key component of electric vehicles.
The plant is to produce 18,000 tonnes of copper foil per year, lifting the company’s annual capacity from 90,000 tonnes to 108,000 tonnes, the plastics maker said.
Nan Ya, a key member of the Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), runs several copper foil plants in Chiayi County and Kunshan City in China’s Jiangsu Province.
Nan Ya’s board also approved a plan to expand its production capacity of high value-added synthetic paper, a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange showed.
The plan, which is to cost NT$1.19 billion, is expected to raise its annual capacity from 65,000 tonnes to 87,000 tonnes.
As for overseas markets, Nan Ya is to build a new plant to produce ethylene glycol in Texas, eyeing cheaper natural gas costs there.
Nan Ya said it is also to construct a new plant in Jiangsu, which would manufacture faux leather for Chinese automakers, without providing a timetable.
Shareholders approved a proposal to distribute cash dividends of NT$4.5 per share, the highest in the past six years, based on a net profit of NT$48.84 billion last year, or earnings per share of NT$6.16.
Profit last year surged 36.7 percent from a year earlier, but sales over the same period fell 8.2 percent to NT$275.29 billion, primarily due to lower crude oil prices in the first three quarters of last year.
The company attributed the better-than-expected earnings performance to profits from selling its shares of DRAM chipmaker Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技) to Micron Technology Inc.
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