PHARMACEUTICALS
EirGenix plant on schedule
EirGenix Inc (台康生技) on Thursday said construction of its new large-scale protein production plant is on schedule and it is expected to go online in the final quarter of next year. The new facility is designed to support two production lines, bringing annual production capacity of more than 1,000kg, the company said at a beam-laying ceremony in Hsinchu. The facility would aid the company’s efforts in developing biosimilar drugs and taking on more contract development and manufacturing orders, the company said.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Equipment billings drop
North America-based semiconductor equipment makers posted a third straight monthly decline in billings for last month at US$2.03 billion, industry association SEMI reported on Friday. The figure represented a monthly contraction of 6.9 percent from US$2.18 billion, but annual growth of 36 percent from US$1.49 billion, SEMI said. Total billings through the first three quarters of this year had surpassed total billings for all of last year, SEMI president and CEO Ajit Manocha said in a statement.
CURRENCIES
Banks’ yuan deposits rise
Yuan deposits held by banks operating in Taiwan last month rose for the fifth consecutive month on the back of the strength of the Chinese currency against the US dollar, the central bank said on Friday. Yuan deposits totaled 312.82 billion yuan (US$47.25 billion) at the end of last month, up 2.74 billion yuan from the previous month, with deposits held by local banks’ domestic banking units totaling 280.6 billion yuan, a monthly increase of 2.97 billion yuan, and those held by offshore banking units hitting 32.22 billion yuan, down 55 million yuan, the central bank said.
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained