Taiwan Sugar Corp (Taisugar, 台糖) is seeking assistance from French retailer Carrefour SA to operate the state-run firm’s retail outlets in Taiwan, as profits have shrunk over the past few years.
Taisugar also expects the collaboration to increase sales of its brand name products in Carrefour’s stores and on its e-commerce platform, the company said in a statement on Friday.
It has inked a cooperation agreement with PresiCarre Corp (家福), a local subsidiary of Carrefour, to run its five hypermarket stores and three supermarket outlets, it said.
The pact was signed by Taisugar president Kuan Tao-i (管道一) and PresiCarre president Wang Chun-chao (王俊超) in Taipei on Friday, Taisugar said.
Not only would Taisugar’s retail business operations improve, but the deal would also create job opportunities, benefit the local economy and industrial development, while providing better products and services for consumers, Kuan said.
“This cooperation will be a case of one plus one with a combined effect of greater than two,” Kuan said in the statement.
The company’s statement did not specify the financial terms of the deal, or an opening date for the new Carrefour-branded stores.
The Chinese-language Apple Daily reported that Carrefour would provide rental income and about NT$400 million (US$12.95 million) in guaranteed annual sales of Taisugar products.
As Taisugar would now be focusing on issues related to employees, store and product arrangements and supplier contracts, which might take about three to four months to complete, the stores would likely launch with Carrefour branding by the end of this year, Apply Daily quoted Kuan as saying.
With the addition of the Taisugar stores, Carrefour’s local retail network is to expand to 69 hypermarkets and 66 supermarkets.
Taisugar opened its first hypermarket in Kaohsiung’s Nantze District (楠梓) in 2001 and later launched four others in Yunlin County’s Beigang Township (北港), Pingtung, Tainan’s Rende District (仁德) and Taichung’s Situn District (西屯).
Taisugar last year recorded losses of more than NT$300 million due to the unfavorable macroeconomic situation and fierce competition in the local market, which prompted the company to begin talks with Carrefour in the second half of last year, local media reports said
Taisugar said that keeping its talented employees and quality suppliers for the Carrefour-branded stores is a top priority.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured