Uni-President Enterprises Corp (統一企業), the nation's largest food conglomerate, secured a 5 percent stake in China's biggest producer of fruit juices yesterday, in a bid to tap the massive juice market across the Taiwan Strait, the company said in a statement filed to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The deal with China Hui Yuan Juice Holdings Co (中國匯源果汁控股), a subsidiary of Beijing Hui Yuan Juice & Beverage Group (北京匯源集團), also reflects closer cooperation between Uni-President and its Chinese rival, the statement said.
cooperation
"This deal helps build a foundation of mutual trust between the two companies. It is expected to strengthen our business cooperation and strategic alliance with China Hui Yuan, which was separated out of the [Beijing Hui Yuan] group to facilitate the investment deal," Uni-President spokesman Simon Hung (
Uni-President released news of the US$30.30 million investment plan after the stock market closed.
The company's shares slid 0.67 percent to close at NT$14.85 on the stock exchange yesterday.
The deal was first reported by the Financial Times on Monday, which said the Chinese side was in informal talks with Coca-Cola Co, Pepsi Co and the Paris-based Groupe Danone, in addition to Uni-President.
Hung said the company is eager to seek merger targets or possibilities of buying into its overseas competitors, as the company is aiming to become Asia's largest food manufacturer by 2017.
Expansion
In recent years Uni-President has expanded its operations to China, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam. The company's beverage sales in China accounted for over 50 percent of its overall operations across the Taiwan Strait.
Beijing Huiyuan Group, established in 1992, holds a leading position in China in manufacturing pure, refrigerated juice. Its 50 production lines can churn out 2.16 million tonnes of juice per year. The group forecasts that this year the newly established juice maker -- China Hui Yuan -- will rake in 2.6 billion Chinese yuan in annual sales, with a net profit of 250 million yuan, the statement said.
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
RSS