AUTOMAKER
Tesla halts China land buy
Tesla Inc halted a plan to buy land in Shanghai to expand its manufacturing plant and turn it into a worldwide export hub because of trade tensions between China and the US. US tariffs of 25 percent on electric vehicles imported from China — imposed under former US president Donald Trump — mean that Tesla would instead restrict the proportion of its global production that is made in China, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The extra acreage would have allowed the company to increase manufacturing capacity, the report said. In a statement to Reuters, the California-based automaker said that its Shanghai factory was “developing as planned.”
AIRLINES
‘Supermoon’ flights unveiled
Flights to a supermoon are the latest offering in airlines’ merry-go-round of flights to nowhere, with Qantas Airways Ltd promising a night of cosmic cocktails and cake aboard one of its Boeing Co 787 Dreamliners. Australia’s flagship carrier is to start selling tickets from today for a trip on May 26 to see the rising supermoon, which that evening also happens to be a total lunar eclipse. For A$1,499 (US$1,176) for business class, the night flight is to climb above any cloud cover and should touch 13,000m, the maximum cruising altitude of a 787.
AIRLINES
Lufthansa raises equity
Deutsche Lufthansa AG is working with banks on a plan to raise about 3 billion euros (US$3.65 billion) in equity to help repay its state COVID-19 bailout, people familiar with the matter said. The timing and size of the capital increase are to be subject to market conditions, and the company could raise the money as soon as next month, the people said. Europe’s largest airline received a 9 billion euro state bailout last year after the COVID-19 pandemic ended a decades-long boom in air travel. The new funding would provide enough cash to repay most of a 5.5 billion euro silent participation still held by the German government.
MEAT PROCESSING
Tyson hit by call for chicken
Tyson Foods Inc has said that it is struggling to meet rebounding chicken demand because of a worker shortage and slow hatchings, even as a strong beef market is set to boost overall sales. The biggest US meat company is seeing robust demand as the world economy mends from the pandemic, and it is raising prices across businesses to pass through higher animal-feed costs and other expenses. That would help make up for thinner returns in chicken, where labor tightness means that plants are operating at about 80 percent of capacity. Tyson also said that it cannot maximize profit in its pork unit because of a dearth of skilled labor to strip down carcasses.
TECHNOLOGY
IBM automation product
International Business Machines Corp (IBM) is rolling out a new product that would help businesses automate tasks, capitalizing on the rise of chatbots and virtual assistants during the pandemic and taking another step in its pivot toward cloud services and artificial intelligence. The tool, called Watson Orchestrate, uses artificial intelligence to select and sequence the prepackaged skills needed to perform a task across sales, human resources or operations functions. It is to be compatible with Slack Technologies Inc and e-mail, as well as connect to business applications such as Salesforce.com Inc, SAP SE and Workday Inc.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last