Newly formed United Renewable Energy Co (UREC, 聯合再生能源) plans to set up a team focusing on better-margin solar arrays and solar power plant construction projects.
The special team is also to help clients find equity investors, and deal with loan and tax matters, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
UREC, which combines three solar cell makers — Neo Solar Power Energy Corp (新日光能源), Gintech Energy Corp (昱晶能源) and Solartech Energy Corp (昇陽光電) — is to start formal operation on Oct. 1.
It aims to turn profitable in three years, company executives said.
“The new company will not rely on manufacturing and selling solar cells to make a profit, but will focus on selling solar systems,” UREC chairman Sam Hong (洪傳獻) told a news conference.
While the newly merged entity is still in the process of corporate restructuring and resource integration, UREC has secured solar power plant construction projects with 1 gigawatt installed capacity with customers in the US, the UK, Japan, Latin America and Dubai, Hong said.
In Taiwan, the company is in talks with customers to build 400 megawatt ground-mounted solar photovoltaic arrays in Changhua and Chiayi counties, Hong said.
The company plans to proceed on the projects worth NT$20 billion (US$649.7 million) in cooperation with a Japanese private equity fund once the deals have been finalized, he said.
UREC has also collaborated with a local life insurance company to build 100 megawatt solar arrays for a fish farm in Tainan, with the construction work set to begin next year, the company said.
So far, UREC has helped customers build solar plants with an aggregate capacity of 500 megawatts in Taiwan, Japan, the US and Europe, the company said.
To pursue profitability, UREC aims to expand its solar module capacities and improve the cost structure of solar cell manufacturing, Hong said.
“Our strategy is to concentrate on providing services to build solar power plants,” UREC chief executive officer Pan Wen-whe (潘文輝) said. “We also intend to build our own brand of solar modules. To save costs, we plan to outsource production of solar modules.”
With these efforts under way, UREC expects to break even by the end of next year and swing into the black by 2020, Hong said.
In the second quarter of the year, the three solar cell makers saw their combined losses fall 31 percent to NT$967 million from the first quarter, with overall revenue down 1.2 percent to NT$6.05 billion, company data showed.
The narrowing losses reflected early gains from consolidation and strategic transformation, Hong said.
Meanwhile, revenue fell less than expected in the face of China’s new energy policy, which took effect in June and significantly scaled back solar subsidiaries, he 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