Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), the nation’s largest industrial conglomerate, yesterday said it plans to invest US$247.88 million in a Vietnamese steelmaking venture through five of its major subsidiaries in second-round fundraising.
The investment is to replenish Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corp’s (台塑河靜鋼鐵興業) operational capital, which plans to raise US$500 million in the second installment of its ongoing capital injection project, statements from Formosa’s subsidiaries to the Taiwan Stock Exchange said.
Formosa Ha Tinh Steel, the largest foreign direct investment venture in Vietnam, would see its paid-in capital increase from US$5 billion to US$5.5 billion, a Formosa Plastics official said by telephone.
Four of the group’s members — Formosa Plastics Corp (台灣塑膠), Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠), Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corp (台塑化纖) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) — each hold an 11.432 percent stake in the Vietnamese unit.
Each company is to pay about US$57.17 million in the second installment in accordance with their shareholdings, separate filings with the Taiwan Stock Exchange said.
Formosa Taffeta Co (福懋興業), the group’s textile affiliate, which holds a 3.847 percent stake, also plans to invest US$19.23 million in Formosa Ha Tinh Steel.
The investment requires board approvals from each company.
The Vietnamese joint venture would have an installation capacity of 7 million tonnes of steel products a year if its two furnaces achieve full capacity, a report by the Chinese-language Economic Daily News said.
The second blast furnace is scheduled to become operational in the first half of next year, Formosa Plastics said on Wednesday last week.
The first furnace, which began production in May this year, has an annual capacity of 3.5 million tonnes, the company said.
In related news, Formosa Plastics is to inject new capital of US$267 million in its fully owned Chinese subsidiary, the company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
The Ningbo-based unit — which supplies acrylate, polypropylene and polyvinyl chloride to Chinese customers — has paid-in capital of NT$772.02 million, the filing said.
The new investment would be used to expand production of propylene, an upstream material in petrochemical supply chains, following the company’s long-term target of achieving vertical integration in the Chinese market.
Formosa Plastics shares yesterday edged up 0.11 percent to NT$94.8 in Taipei trading ahead of the announcement, outperforming the benchmark TAIEX, which fell 0.37 percent.
China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼), one of major shareholders of Formosa Ha Tinh Steel, yesterday did not show any interest in joining the latest fundraising plan. It did not participate in the venture’s first-round fundraising project.
CSC holds a 22.5 percent stake in the venture.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS