Taiwan Cement Corp (台灣水泥) yesterday said that it expects cement to account for less than half of its sales by 2025, as revenue from energy storage and vehicle charging businesses pick up.
Cement production would remain the company’s core business, despite business diversification efforts, Taiwan Cement chairman Nelson Chang (張安平) said at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting.
While the company is expanding into the green energy business in line with global efforts to curb carbon emissions, it would continue to produce up to 80 million tonnes of cement a year, Chang said.
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Cement Corp
The foray into green energy is intended to help maintain its core operations, as cement manufacturing generates considerable carbon emissions and is subject to heavy carbon taxes in different parts of the world, Chang said.
For instance, its cement facility in Portugal pays a carbon tax of US$100 per tonne, higher than the selling price of cement, he said.
As such, the company has no choice but to invest in carbon reduction ventures to stay afloat, he added.
Carbon reductions must be fast and efficient, and the use of solar and other green energy resources in producing cement is not enough to offset carbon emissions, Chang said.
That means Taiwan Cement has to press ahead and develop carbon capture techniques that would help mitigate the negative impact of cement production on the environment, he said.
Carbon reduction will be crucial for Taiwan Cement and the whole industry in the coming decades, as carbon emissions are gaining speed and causing unimaginable damage to the world, he said.
The company will continue to produce cement, because it is a basic material for all building and infrastructure projects, he said.
As cement is a social necessity, Taiwan Cement has a responsibility to help reduce carbon emissions, he added.
Chang said he has been visiting cement facilities in China every month since the nation reopened its borders late last year.
Taiwan Cement is conservative about its outlook for this year, amid global concern over curbing carbon emissions and raw material prices remaining high, albeit lower than their peak last year, officials said.
Investments in energy storage and vehicle charging would take time to make meaningful contributions to profit, they said.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
RSS