Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), the nation’s largest industrial conglomerate, said it would today fire up the second blast furnace at its Vietnamese venture, Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corp (台塑河靜鋼鐵興業), marking the completion of the first phase of its construction of the steel mill.
The blast furnace was approved by the Vietnamese authorities last week, the group said in a statement yesterday.
The first furnace began production last year.
The firm forecast its Vietnamese unit would generate US$2.5 billion in revenue this year, with an expected sales volume of 4.65 million tonnes of steel products.
That would translate into about 1.27 percent of Vietnam’s GDP this year, up from 0.45 percent last year, the group said.
The investment by Formosa Ha Tinh Steel is the largest foreign direct investment in Vietnam and also the biggest integrated steel mill in Southeast Asia, the group said.
The steel mill produced 1.6 million tonnes of steel last year and sold 1.37 million tonnes, the group said.
JPMorgan Chase & Co chief executive officer Jamie Dimon on Tuesday quipped that his company is likely to outlast the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), while reiterating the bank’s commitment to the country in wide-ranging comments that also touched on Taiwan, free speech and former US president Donald Trump. “We hope to be there [in China] for a long time,” Dimon told a panel discussion at the Boston College Chief Executives Club. Relaying a “joke” he made during a recent visit to Hong Kong, he said “The communist party is celebrating its 100th year. So is JPMorgan. And I’ll make you a
Taiwan is to start producing geothermal energy on a commercial scale for the first time in nearly 30 years tomorrow, when an Yilan County facility begins operations. The 4.2 megawatt Cingshuei Geothermal Power Plant in Datong Township (大同) — the first privately built geothermal power plant in Taiwan — was granted commercial license by the Bureau of Energy on Oct. 27, county authorities told the Central News Agency on Tuesday. Lin Kun-wei (林坤緯), a section head at the Yilan Business and Tourism Department, said that the facility would generate up to 3,150 kilowatts per hour, which could meet the demand of up
The Kaohsiung City Government yesterday said it would impose a property hoarding tax as it is seeking to contain speculation in the real-estate market, calling recent price increases “abnormal.” The announcement came in support of the Ministry of Finance’s call for local governments to levy a high tax rate on people with more than one property. Ministry officials on Tuesday discussed strategies to rein in speculation with the nation’s six special municipalities, as well as the Hsinchu city and county governments. About 84,000 out of 1.06 million housing units in Kaohsiung are not residential property, the city government said in a
BOOST EXPECTED: Higher market prices would offset effects of the industry’s transition to more climate-friendly production methods, a company official said China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼) expects steel demand to increase on the back of governments around the world subsidizing infrastructure construction amid a stabilizing COVID-19 pandemic, CSC chairman Wong Chao-tung (翁朝棟) told an investors’ meeting yesterday. “After getting through the hard times, I foresee at least one year, very possibly two years, of strong steel market,” Wong said. Calling a dip in steel prices a “short respite for the market,” Wong said that it would likely bounce back early next year on the back of mild winter temperatures around the world allowing construction activity. Despite COVID-19 spikes in some regions and increased
RSS