Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行) and four other banks are providing Taya Group (大亞集團) with a NT$3.2 billion (US$106.31 million) syndicated loan to install 76 megawatts of ground-mounted solar power in Tainan, Bank SinoPac said yesterday.
Bank SinoPac is serving as the lead bank, with KGI Bank (凱基銀行), Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南銀行), Chang Hwa Bank (彰化銀行) and International Bills Finance Corp (國際票券) also contributing to the loan, it said.
The banks did not disclose interest rates for the loan nor how it would be split among the five lenders, saying only that the syndicated loan was 153 percent oversubscribed.
Photo: Kelson Wang, Taipei Times
Interest rates for syndicated loans are usually lower than those for regular corporate lending, one bank manager said.
“We have been focusing on offering green loans since 2012, as it helps the nation acquire more clean energy,” Bank SinoPac president Eric Chuang (莊銘福) told a news conference in Taipei.
The loan marked its latest funding for solar power projects after it last year arranged NT$2 billion in syndicated loans for Formosa Solar Renewable Power Co Ltd (寶島陽光), NT$4 billion for Kingstone Energy Technology Co (國軒科技) and NT$6 billion for Chailease Finance Co Ltd (中租迪和), Chuang said.
The lender has made loans to more than 4,000 solar power farms with total installed capacity of 1 gigawatt as of the end of last month, he said, adding that the amount of outstanding loans totaled NT$27.4 billion.
Taya Electric Wire and Cable Co (大亞電線電纜 ) is to build a photovoltaic power station on a 70m2 plot in Tainan’s Xuejia District (學甲), chairman Ryan Shen (沈尚弘) said.
It is the nation’s first solar power project built on an integrated plot of private land that had different owners, Shen said, adding that the firm spent two-and-a-half years persuading the owners, who had used the land for raising fish, to rent it for solar power.
“Thankfully, there were only a few owners, so it was not too complicated. They agreed, as selling solar power would make more money than selling fish,” Shen said, adding that the company also had to apply to change the land’s zoning.
Taya is to finish the solar farm by the end of this year, which is expected to generate 1.8 billion units of electricity in the next 20 years, he said.
The company would sell the electricity to Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) under the state-owned company’s feed-in tariff (FIT) scheme, with total profit forecast to be at least NT$2.4 billion, Shen said.
“We did consider selling the power to private companies that need green energy, such as Apple Inc’s suppliers,” Shen said.
“However, as the FIT scheme promises a fixed price over the next 20 years, it can help us earn revenue without any price fluctuations, so we prefer selling to Taipower,” Shen said.
Private technology companies prefer onshore wind power, as the energy is much cheaper than ground-mounted solar power, with the prices for the two types at about NT$2 per unit and NT$4 per unit respectively, he said.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
RSS