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.
France cannot afford to ignore the third credit-rating reduction in less than a year, French Minister of Finance Roland Lescure said. “Three agencies have downgraded us and we can’t ignore this cloud,” he told Franceinfo on Saturday, speaking just hours after S&P lowered his country’s credit rating to “A+” from “AA-” in an unscheduled move. “Fundamentally, it’s an additional cloud to a weather forecast that was already pretty gray. It’s a call for lucidity and responsibility,” he said, adding that this is “a call to be serious.” The credit assessor’s move means France has lost its double-A rating at two of the
Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), founder and CEO of US-based artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday celebrated the first Nvidia Blackwell wafer produced on US soil. Huang visited TSMC’s advanced wafer fab in the US state of Arizona and joined the Taiwanese chipmaker’s executives to witness the efforts to “build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI factories, right here in America,” Nvidia said in a statement. At the event, Huang joined Y.L. Wang (王英郎), vice president of operations at TSMC, in signing their names on the Blackwell wafer to
AI BOOST: Although Taiwan’s reliance on Chinese rare earth elements is limited, it could face indirect impacts from supply issues and price volatility, an economist said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) has sharply raised its forecast for Taiwan’s economic growth this year to 5.6 percent, citing stronger-than-expected exports and investment linked to artificial intelligence (AI), as it said that the current momentum could peak soon. The acceleration of the global AI race has fueled a surge in Taiwan’s AI-related capital spending and exports of information and communications technology (ICT) products, which have been key drivers of growth this year. “We have revised our GDP forecast for Taiwan upward to 5.6 percent from 4 percent, an upgrade that mainly reflects stronger-than-expected AI-related exports and investment in the third
RARE EARTHS: The call between the US Treasury Secretary and his Chinese counterpart came as Washington sought to rally G7 partners in response to China’s export controls China and the US on Saturday agreed to conduct another round of trade negotiations in the coming week, as the world’s two biggest economies seek to avoid another damaging tit-for-tat tariff battle. Beijing last week announced sweeping controls on the critical rare earths industry, prompting US President Donald Trump to threaten 100 percent tariffs on imports from China in retaliation. Trump had also threatened to cancel his expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in South Korea later this month on the sidelines of the APEC summit. In the latest indication of efforts to resolve their dispute, Chinese state media reported that
RSS