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.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
RSS