Wei Chuan Foods Corp (味全) yesterday announced that its board of directors has approved the sale of the Matsusei supermarket chain (松青超市) in a move to stem losses it is suffering from its retail unit.
Wei Chuan, operated by Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團), said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange that it would sell Matsusei to Chuan Lian Enterprise Co Ltd (全聯實業) for NT$450 million (US$13.68 million).
Chuan Lian, which operates the nation’s largest supermarket chain, Pxmart (全聯福利中心), is to acquire Matsusei’s 65 stores, including equipment, assets and brand trademark, further cementing its position as the nation’s top supermarket chain operator.
Photo: CNA
However, the terms of the deal do not include Matsusei’s current inventories, Wei Chuan said.
Pxmart operates 746 stores in Taiwan, of which more than 700 offer fresh produce. Its takeover of Matsusei is likely to bring the figure to well above 800 after the company completes resource integration.
Since its establishment in 1986, Matsusei’s sales performance has never met expectations in the saturated local market.
In addition, continued operating losses widened markedly in the past two years due to the severity of the food safety crisis, Wei Chuan said in a statement.
Matsusei was caught up in last year’s boycott movement against businesses owned by Ting Hsin, a processed foods conglomerate that had drawn the public’s ire by putting tainted cooking oil on the market.
Wei Chuan yesterday said that it could no longer sustain Matsusei’s operations, adding that it lacks the resources to initiate the required business transformation plans for the ailing chain.
The company has pledged to ensure the interest of the 790 workers employed at Matsusei. It also plans to negotiate with Pxmart to offer employees reassignment and compensation terms that are more favorable than what is required by labor laws.
Wei Chuan said it is to focus on its core food and beverages businesses in Taiwan and China.
Founded in 1998, Pxmart has evolved from a government-run low-priced grocery chain catering only to military and public sector workers to a supermarket giant.
In May, the company estimated sales to exceed NT$800 billion this year and outlined plans to be listed on the local bourse in the future.
Pxmart’s most recent major acquisitions date back to 2007, when it purchased 12 supermarkets operated by the Taipei Agricultural Products Marketing Co (台北農產公司).
Matsusei stores are expected to close their doors after Dec. 31.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has