Polyester fiber and plastics maker Shinkong Synthetic Fibers Corp (新光合成纖維) yesterday said that several new engineering plastics production lines would start operations in the first quarter of next year, as part of the company’s efforts to boost manufacturing efficiency.
The company, one of the nation’s leading textile suppliers, is expanding its engineering plastics production capacity at its plant in Taoyuan’s Guanyin District (觀音).
“Those new production lines would help boost the company’s annual production capacity [of engineering plastics] from 50,000 tonnes now to 110,000 tonnes next year,” company president Samson Luo (羅時銓) told an investors’ conference in Taipei.
The ongoing expansion project is in line with the firm’s near-term goal to meet rising customer demand for engineering plastics, which are widely used in the automotive industry.
The company plans to allocate 1 percent of its annual revenue — nearly NT$14 million (US$461,787) — for the research and development (R&D) of those high added-value products, which contribute nearly 30 percent to the company’s plastics sales, it said.
Luo said that the company has secured orders from several European and Japanese customer in the automotive industry at the beginning of this year.
The company is also considering expanding the capacity at its Thailand plant in the next three years to help cement its position in Southeast Asia, Luo said, but declined to elaborate.
The company’s subsidiary in Thailand started producing polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle-grade resin in 1997.
Shinkong Synthetic Fibers provided a positive business outlook for the second half of the year, as customer demand for functional wear is expected to grow significantly ahead of the FIFA World Cup next year.
The company posted net profit of NT$323.9 million in the first half of the year, or earnings per share of NT$0.2, down 6.5 percent from NT$346.6 million during the same period last year, it said in a Taiwan Stock Exchange filing.
First-half sales totaled NT$696.4 million, down 2.9 percent from NT$716.9 million a year earlier.
Chemical fiber and plastics remained the company’s two major revenue sources, taking up about 30 percent and 50 percent of total sales respectively, company data showed.
Shinkong’s stock yesterday edged up 0.33 percent to close at NT$9.08 in Taipei trading, underperforming the broader market, which gained 0.84 percent to 10,311.16 points.
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