Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠) said yesterday the Chiayi plant that was hit by a fire on Sunday accounted for just 0.7 percent of its sales and the company would use other facilities to make up for the lost capacity.
While the company, the nation’s largest plastics maker, tried to downplay the damage that the accident would cost the company, its shares fell 1.46 percent to close at NT$67.50 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday, underperforming the TAIEX which edged up 0.02 percent from Friday’s closing.
Nan Ya president Wu Chia-chau (吳嘉昭) said the Chiayi plant had a monthly output of 2,000 tonnes of synthetic paper.
In a stock exchange filing, the company said it had not yet been able to assess the damage for now.
However, “as all losses would be covered by insurance, the impact on the company’s finance and business operation is limited,” Wu said in the filing.
Nan Ya reported NT$17.16 billion (US$549 million) in sales last month, the company filing said. Based on this figure, damage from the fire could cost it about NT$120 million in sales each month. Local media, however, estimated that the loss could rise to NT$150 million per month, citing unnamed company sources.
The company did not say how long it would take to resume production at the plant.
Last month’s sales rose 25.3 percent from a year ago but declined 9 percent from the previous month’s level, according to Nan Ya’s past exchange filings.
In the first nine months of the year, revenue increased 40.3 percent to NT$160.96 billion, Nan Ya said in the filing.
Separately, three other affiliates under the Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團) released their sales figures for last month and for the first three quarters.
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化), which shut one of its refineries in Yunlin in July due to a fire, saw sales drop 12.6 percent from a year ago to NT$48.45 billion last month. On a month-on-month basis, however, sales were up 2.5 percent from August due to higher oil prices.
Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑) reported that sales last month increased 22 percent from a year ago to NT$15.55 billion, but fell 13 percent from August.
Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corp (台灣化學纖維) reported NT$21.5 billion in sales last month, up 22 percent year-on-year but down 4 percent month-on-month.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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