Taiwanese tire manufacturer Kenda Rubber Industrial Co Ltd (建大輪胎) said that it plans to invest NT$10 billion (US$345.3 million) to build a new car tire plant in Taiwan, which will be a key part of its efforts to boost its revenue to NT$50 billion within next five years through diversifying manufacturing sites.
The investment plan can only be achieved out if the government helps the company find a 29.1 hectare plot of land, otherwise it will have to divert the investment to another destination, Kenda chairman Yang Ying-ming (楊銀明) said in a press conference during a visit by the Council for Economic Planning and Development to Kenda’s car tire factory in Yunlin County on Friday.
The chairman said Kenda, a tire supplier to Giant Manufacturing Co Ltd (捷安特), General Motors Co and Toyota Motor Corp, is seeking to expand its ability to grow annual revenue by 66.67 percent by 2018, from NT$30.19 billion last year.
Taiwan is its first choice for such investment, the company said.
As Kenda’s research and development center and mold development division are all located in Taiwan, the company hopes to build a new car tire factory to facilitate development of its car tire products, Yang said.
“As the costs involved in building a plant in China are still lower than those in Taiwan, we do not want to put all our eggs in one basket,” Yang said.
According to Yang, the US government has imposed a tariff of 25 percent to 35 percent on tires shipped from China starting in 2009, causing losses for the company.
Currently, Kenda has invested NT$1.6 billion in a car tire factory in Yunlin, which can produce 4,000 tires a day.
The manufacturing capacity of the factory will double to 8,000 tires a day after a production line is expanded by June.
However, that is still far lower than the company’s target of boosting local car tire production to 25,000 tires a day.
The proposed NT$10 billion investment could create 2,000 jobs, Yang said.
As the company is suffering from labor shortages at its existing production lines in Taiwan, Kenda urged the government to extend the preferential treatment of allowing a 40 percent foreign labor ratio to the rest of its its factories.
Local firms can usually only hire 25 foreign laborers out of every 100 workers.
Huang Shi-chin (黃錫欽), assistant vice president of Kenda, said the company is facing difficulty in hiring local workers because of the harsh smell of burning rubber and plastics, and said it is even more difficult to hire people to work night shifts.
Kenda’s Taiwanese operations recorded NT$6.46 billion in revenue for last year, up 4.63 percent from the NT$6.18 billion it posted in 2011, according to the company’s filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Kenda’s share price rose 0.82 percent to NT$37.1 on Friday in Taipei trading. Over the last 12 months, Kenda’s share price has soared 16.67 percent, while the TAIEX gained 6.9 percent.
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
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
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
STILL UNCLEAR: Several aspects of the policy still need to be clarified, such as whether the exemptions would expand to related products, PwC Taiwan warned The TAIEX surged yesterday, led by gains in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), after US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping 100 percent tariff on imported semiconductors — while exempting companies operating or building plants in the US, which includes TSMC. The benchmark index jumped 556.41 points, or 2.37 percent, to close at 24,003.77, breaching the 24,000-point level and hitting its highest close this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed. TSMC rose NT$55, or 4.89 percent, to close at a record NT$1,180, as the company is already investing heavily in a multibillion-dollar plant in Arizona that led investors to assume
RSS