Expressing concern about the ongoing environmental impact assessment for a NT$5.4 billion (US$184.4 million) seawater desalination plant project in Yunlin County, Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團) yesterday urged the government to ease its “unreasonable” regulations.
The government should take into account the feasibility of the standards it has set, FPG chairman William Wong (王文淵) told a news conference in Taipei, referring to the restrictions on the facility’s daily output.
Wong’s remarks came after the project, which aims to reduce the firm’s reliance on Nantou County’s Jiji Dam (集集攔河堰), received initial approval from an environmental impact assessment committee on Friday last week.
However, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) requires FPG to ensure stable water supply from the facility, which should run at full capacity between February and May, and produce nearly 100,000 tonnes of desalinated water per day.
“It is difficult to make the plant fully operational for four consecutive months, given so many uncertainties,” Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corp (台灣化學纖維) vice chairman Hong Fu-yuan (洪福源) said, adding that changeable weather conditions might result in high turbidity in seawater.
The government’s assessment of the project should be focused on the environmental impact the facility could exert, instead of the production volume, Hong said.
Meanwhile, FPG officials were upbeat about the Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corp (台塑河靜鋼鐵興業) venture in Vietnam, saying that the production schedule is back on track.
It is forecast to generate more than US$2.5 billion this year, unit chairman Y.C. Chen (陳源成) 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