Century Iron & Steel Industrial Co (CISI, 世紀鋼構) yesterday inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Orsted A/S to become the preferred supplier of underwater wind turbine foundations to the Danish company, as part of the Taiwanese company’s effort to tap the nation’s renewable energy industry.
CISI’s underwater substructures for wind turbines are to be used in building Orsted’s offshore wind farms off the coast of Changhua County, according to the firms.
“The collaboration with Orsted not only represents CISI’s corporate transformation, but also marks the progress of development in Taiwan’s renewable energy industry,” CISI chairman Lai Wen-hsiang (賴文祥) told reporters on the sidelines after the signing ceremony in Taipei.
The project with Orsted is to be carried out by CISI’s subsidiary Century Wind Power Co Ltd (CWP, 世紀離岸風電), Lai added.
The Danish energy company approached 170 Taiwanese companies over the past year and narrowed its search to 15 local partners for close collaboration, including CISI, Orsted Asia-Pacific general manager and Taiwan branch chairman Matthias Bausenwein said.
“CWP has a strong background in large-scale steel manufacturing and has shown a strong drive to invest in manufacturing offshore wind farms,” Bausenwein said.
Based on the MOU, the Danish company is to share its knowledge in developing offshore wind farms with CWP, helping the Taiwanese firm to build the underwater substructures for Orsted’s wind turbines, the two firms’ said in the joint statement.
CWP is to invest NT$5 billion (US$165.54 million) in purchasing equipment and building two plants at Taipei Port, with the plants scheduled to be in trial operation before the end of 2019 and supplying foundations to Orsted in 2020, Lai said.
In addition to the two plants at Taipei Port, which have a combined size of 16 hectares, CWP plans to rent another 16 hectares of land at the port to store the underwater substructure jackets for the wind turbine foundations, Lai said.
Orsted’s offshore wind farm projects in Taiwan include four sites located 35km to 60km off the Changhua coast. The projects’ total capacity is estimated to be 2.4 gigawatts, supplying electricity to 2.8 million households in the nation.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has approved a capital budget of US$31.28 billion for production expansion to meet long-term development needs during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company’s board meeting yesterday approved the capital appropriation plan for purposes such as the installation of advanced technology capacity and fab construction, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. At an earnings conference last month, TSMC forecast that its capital expenditure for this year would be at the higher end of the US$52 billion to US$56 billion range it forecast in January in response to robust demand for 5G, AI and
RSS