Rather than exporting masks, the nation’s leading mask manufacturers plan to export turnkey mask factories as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect much of the world.
As a solution to unmet global demand for masks amid the pandemic, Taiwan Comfort Champ Manufacturing Co (台灣康匠) is offering a “total solution” for mask production, including the raw materials, production equipment and testing technology.
“We have miniaturized our mask production line so that it fits in a shipping container. Production can start as soon as you remove the container floor,” Taiwan Comfort Champ chairman Andy Chen (陳勇志) told a news conference in New Taipei City’s Tucheng District (土城) yesterday.
Photo: Chen Jou-chen, Taipei Times
Except for the machines that make and package the masks, the “one-stop mask factory” includes all of the equipment and technical support to produce the critical non-woven layer that serves as the mask’s filtration material, Chen said.
The news conference was organized by the government-backed Taiwan Textile Research Institute (紡織產業綜合研究所).
Each miniature mask factory costs as little as US$5 million and can produce as many as 600,000 masks per day if continuously operated, Taiwan Comfort Champ said.
Higher capacity modules capable of producing up to 2 million masks per day are also available, a company release said.
The mini-factory allows production to rapidly increase and is more environmentally friendly, Chen said.
“Keeping the entire production and packaging process in the same area saves a lot of packaging and transportation costs,” he said.
Despite the unprecedented demand for masks internationally, Taiwan Comfort Champ did not get to cash in on the opportunity because the government set pricing controls, he said.
“We had to drop a lot of foreign orders,” he added.
The company has received inquiries from the US, Canada, Indonesia, Japan and Spain, but investors tend to be hindered by technical hurdles, Taiwan Comfort Champ said, adding that the first turnkey mini factory is to be shipped to Thailand.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
RSS