The cause of a fire late on Saturday at a Nankang Rubber Tire Corp (南港輪胎) plant in Hsinchu County’s Sinfeng Township (新豐) is under investigation, but the blaze is not expected to have a major effect on operations, the company said yesterday.
The fire began about 11:30pm on Saturday, and was extinguished about 1am yesterday, it said.
There were no casualties and damage to the plant was limited, the nation’s second-largest tire maker said in a regulatory filing.
Photo: Huang Mei-chu, Taipei Times
A preliminary investigation indicated the fire broke out in a machinery room on the top floor of a building outside the production plant, Nankang said.
There were no raw materials, semi-finished products or finished products at the site, so there were no chemical leaks or emissions that could harm human health, despite what some local media reports said, Nankang said.
Determining whether the blaze was sparked by overheating machinery or some other problem would have to wait until technicians arrived at the plant today to investigate the fire, it said.
“As the affected area is not the main production area, and the fire was extinguished in a timely manner, losses were controlled to a certain extent,” Nankang said, adding that it was fully insured against fires.
With some internal adjustments, it would be able to maintain normal operations, it added.
Nankang reported revenue of NT$1.96 billion (US$66.44 million) in the second quarter, down 15.7 percent from the first quarter and 19.7 percent from a year earlier, mainly due to lower shipments amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, shipments have improved every month over the quarter, and monthly sales growth remained in the positive territory in May and June compared with the decline seen in April, company data showed.
In the first half of the year, revenue totaled NT$4.16 billion, down 28.65 percent from a year earlier.
Nankang has yet to release its financial results for last quarter. In the first quarter, it reported a net loss of NT$128.38 million, compared with net income of NT$216.29 million a year ago.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS