FOOD
UCC to invest in Yunlin
Japan’s UCC Ueshima Coffee Co Ltd is to invest NT$500 million (US$16.5 million) in building a facility in Yunlin County’s Douliu Industrial Park (斗六工業區). Construction is expected to begin on Wednesday next week, the company said on Friday during a briefing to Yunlin County Commissioner Lee Chin-yung (李進勇). The facility would be built on 5,288m2 of land and is expected to be complete in early 2019, creating 80 jobs, the company said.
TRANSPORTATION
Solar GoStation launched
Electric scooter maker Gogoro Inc (睿能創意) on Friday launched its first solar-powered battery-swapping station. The new GoStation near the Shihsanhang Museum of Archaeology in New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里) is equipped with eight solar panels, which produce an average of 6.21 kilowatt-hours of power per day, the company said. The electricity is used to charge some of the batteries at the station, Gogoro said. GoStations allow Gogoro users to replace their depleted batteries with fully charged ones.
BANKING
Chang Hwa to open branch
Chang Hwa Bank (彰化銀行) is to open a new branch in the Philippines and an office in Myanmar later this year, it said last week after the Philippine government approved its application to open a branch in Manila. Chang Hwa said it hopes that the new branch will start operations by the end of this year. The lender is also to open an office in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, on Tuesday next week in an effort to learn more about the local financial market in preparation for a branch there.
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],”
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
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