President Chain Store Corp (統一超商), the largest convenience-store operator in the nation with more than 3,500 7-Eleven stores, yesterday announced a joint venture with Guangdong-based Livzon Pharma-ceutical Group Inc (麗珠醫藥集團) to tap China's booming retail market.
The 50 million yuan (US$6.05 million) venture, Shenzhen President Cosmed Corp (統一康是美), is 65 percent owned by President Chain and 35 percent by Livzon, President Chain said in a statement.
The new venture will open 100 Cosmed outlets within five years in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, selling cosmetics and pharmaceutical products, the statement said, with the first drugstore expected to open sometime this quarter in Shenzhen.
President Chain Store president Hsu Chung-jen (徐重仁) and Zhu Baoguo (朱保國), chairman of Joincare Pharmaceutical Group Industry Co (健康元藥業集團), Livzon's parent company, signed the agreement in Shenzhen.
"I believe that with our market presence and systematic management and marketing strategy, we'll be able to bring a variety of products and services to meet consumers' need," Hsu was quoted as saying in the statement.
President Chain runs 113 Cosmed stores in Taiwan, making it the country's second-largest drugstore chain after the Hong Kong-based Watsons Taiwan, which has 241 outlets. It plans to open 87 more Cosmed stores in this country by 2006. Cosmed reported NT$2.95 billion in revenues last year.
Livzon was established in 1985 and became the first Chinese pharmaceutical company to list both A and B shares in China's stock market in 1993. It is now one of the top 500 companies in China by sales, and one of the top 50 pharmaceutical stores.
President Chain is keen to capitalize on China's retail market before Beijing opens the sector to overseas investors by the end the year.
While the company is hoping to duplicate its Taiwanese experience by running 7-Eleven stores in Beijing, Seven-Eleven Japan Co beat it to the punch and will open the first such store next Thursday.
Seven-Eleven Japan obtained an approval in January to set up a venture, with two Chinese companies, to open 7-Eleven outlets in Beijing. The Japanese company has said it owns a 65 percent stake in the venture.
Last year President Chain said it would take a 14 percent stake in Seven-Eleven Japan's Beijing venture under a preliminary agreement. However, it is still in discussions with the Japanese company about getting a bigger share, a President Chain official said.
"We will not give up the [7-Eleven] franchise project in Beijing," Zenia Lee (李玉雯), a President Chain public relations official said yesterday.
Lee said the company will negotiate with US-based 7-Eleven Inc for permission to to set up shop in China.
She said several high-level executives of the US company are scheduled to visit Taipei in the middle of the month.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
AI: Softbank’s stake increases in Nvidia and TSMC reflect Masayoshi Son’s effort to gain a foothold in key nodes of the AI value chain, from chip design to data infrastructure Softbank Group Corp is building up stakes in Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the latest reflection of founder Masayoshi Son’s focus on the tools and hardware underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). The Japanese technology investor raised its stake in Nvidia to about US$3 billion by the end of March, up from US$1 billion in the prior quarter, regulatory filings showed. It bought about US$330 million worth of TSMC shares and US$170 million in Oracle Corp, they showed. Softbank’s signature Vision Fund has also monetized almost US$2 billion of public and private assets in the first half of this year,
RSS