PharmaEssentia Corp (藥華醫藥), which provides drugs for a rare type of blood cancer, yesterday broke ground for a new factory in Hsinchu, which is scheduled to be completed in 2025.
The plant is expected to boost the company’s annual production value by NT$40 billion (US$1.25 billion), executives from the firm said at the groundbreaking ceremony.
The NT$5.1 billion plant is to comprise 50,000m2 to manufacture the polycythemia vera (PV) drug Ropeginterferon alfa-2b, also known as Ropeg.
Photo: CNA
PV is a rare blood cancer that causes bone marrow to produce excessive red blood cells and slows blood flow.
Approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in November last year, Ropeg is PharmaEassential’s most significant product, and helped boost the firm’s revenue to NT$2.04 billion in the first nine months, six times higher than a year earlier, the company said.
“Ropeg has gained approval in Taiwan, the EU, Switzerland, Israel, South Korea and the US. Now we are targeting Japan and China as the drug’s next markets,” PharmaEssentia chairwoman Teng Ching-leou (詹青柳) said at the ceremony.
The company is conducting a phase 3 clinical trial to determine whether Ropeg can also treat essential thrombocythemia, an uncommon disorder in which bone marrow produces too many platelets, Teng said.
PharmaEssentia would apply for market approval worldwide if the trial proves successful, she added.
The construction of the new plant in Hsinchu County’s Jhubei City (竹北) is expected to be finished in the first quarter of 2025, and enter mass production later that year after testing and an inspection by the US Food and Drug Administration, the company said.
PharmaEssentia also plans to partner with National Taiwan University Hospital’s branch in Hsinchu to develop cell therapy, the company added.
The company’s third-quarter revenue totaled NT$811 million, up 781 percent from a year earlier, while sales of Ropeg in the US continued to grow at a double-digit pace, it said.
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
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six