Toray Group, Japan’s largest manufacturer of protective film for display panels, yesterday opened a new plant in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Greater Kaohsiung’s Lujhu (路竹) to expand its capacity and global market share.
Toray, which has a local subsidiary in Taiwan — Toray Advanced Film Kaohsiung Co — plans to use the new plant to supply up to 17,000 tonnes of protective films by June to meet the growing global demand for LCD displays, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said.
The ministry said Toray’s NT$2.4 billion (US$82.84 million) investment in Taiwan would help strengthen the optoelectronics industry and create more than 100 job opportunities.
Christophe Lai (賴作松), chief executive officer of the Executive Yuan’s Invest-in-Taiwan industry promotion center, yesterday said major Taiwanese LCD panel makers — AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) and Innolux Corp (群創光電) — are clients of Toray and are heavily dependent on the company for materials to manufacture their display products.
“Toray chose to expand its capacity by investing in Taiwan because the Taiwanese government provides better intellectual property protection for businesses and their products,” Lai said by telephone.
Toray sees Taiwan’s overall investment environment as generally better than Singapore’s and Hong Kong’s as Taiwan’s Trade Secrets Act (營業秘密法) and Patent Act (專利法) ensure the safety of companies’ trade secrets and trademarks, Lai said.
Investing in Taiwan can also enhance Toray’s communication with local clients and help reduce its manufacturing cost, Lai added.
Currently, Taiwan’s business tax rate is 17 percent, the same as that in Singapore but much lower than China’s 25 percent and South Korea’s 22 percent, he said.
Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登精密), the sole extreme ultraviolet pod supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), yesterday said it has trimmed its revenue growth target for this year as US tariffs are likely to depress customer demand and weigh on the whole supply chain. Gudeng’s remarks came after the US on Monday notified 14 countries, including Japan and South Korea, of new tariff rates that are set to take effect on Aug. 1. Taiwan is still negotiating for a rate lower than the 32 percent “reciprocal” tariffs announced by the US in April, which it later postponed to today. The
MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR: Revenue from AI servers made up more than 50 percent of Wistron’s total server revenue in the second quarter, the company said Wistron Corp (緯創) on Tuesday reported a 135.6 percent year-on-year surge in revenue for last month, driven by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, with the momentum expected to extend into the third quarter. Revenue last month reached NT$209.18 billion (US$7.2 billion), a record high for June, bringing second-quarter revenue to NT$551.29 billion, a 129.47 percent annual increase, the company said. Revenue in the first half of the year totaled NT$897.77 billion, up 87.36 percent from a year earlier and also a record high for the period, it said. The company remains cautiously optimistic about AI server shipments in the third quarter,
ELECTRONICS: Strong growth in cloud services and smart consumer electronics offset computing declines, helping the company to maintain sales momentum, Hon Hai said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday announced that its sales for last month rose 10 percent year-on-year, driven by strong growth in cloud and networking products amid the ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company, also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), reported consolidated sales of NT$540.24 billion (US$18.67 billion) for the month, the highest ever for the period, and a 10.09 percent increase from a year earlier, although it was down 12.26 percent from the previous month. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said its cloud
APPRECIATION: The central bank stepped in to stabilize the NT dollar after a surge in foreign institutional investment, triggered by optimism about tariffs and US Fed policy Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high at the end of last month, as the central bank intervened in the currency market to curb the New Taiwan dollar’s appreciation against the US dollar. Foreign exchange reserves increased by US$5.48 billion from May, reaching an all-time high of US$598.43 billion, the central bank said on Friday. While the central bank did not disclose the scale of its intervention, Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Eugene Tsai (蔡炯民) said that the currency market remained relatively stable until the middle of last month. However, a shift occurred following the US Federal Reserve’s signal of a