Scania, the world’s third-largest manufacturer of heavy trucks and buses, has set up a new delivery center in Taoyuan County, the third of its kind around the globe, a company official said on Wednesday.
“The establishment of a delivery center here in Taiwan is one element in Scania’s strategy to strengthen our position in a fast-growing market that is very important to us,” Scania Griffin Automotive (永德福汽車) chairman Ake Norrman said at an inauguration ceremony.
“This facility will have a capacity of 500 vehicles per year, enabling us to shorten delivery time to our customers, which is a very important competitive factor,” he said.
With Taiwan’s well-established transportation infrastructure and its potential to develop into a logistics center, Scania said it expected to invest more than NT$100 million (US$2.9 million) and employ between 20 and 30 workers at the delivery center.
The Swedish truck maker has opened similar facilities in South Africa and Malaysia.
Swedish Trade Council Representative Henrik Bystrom said Scania made a good choice when it picked Taoyuan County as it is close to the capital and the major airport and seaports, making it very similar to Scania’s headquarters in Sodertalje, Sweden.
Scania Griffin Automotive president Jerry Liu (劉振偉) said the company would emulate Dell’s business model of integrating logistics and production.
Liu said the new delivery center would first focus on meeting local demand, adding that there was a potential for the company to supply its vehicles to China in the future, but not at the moment because of China’s lower environmental standards.
Scania’s vehicles are 5 percent to 10 percent more expensive than its European competitors and cost between 10 percent and 20 percent more than its Japanese competitors because of their high fuel efficiency and durability, Liu said.
Last year, parent group Scania AB reported revenues of 8.1 billion euros (US$10.3 billion) and earnings before tax of 1.1 billion euros.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) yesterday said that Intel Corp would find itself in the same predicament as it did four years ago if its board does not come up with a core business strategy. Chang made the remarks in response to reporters’ questions about the ailing US chipmaker, once an archrival of TSMC, during a news conference in Taipei for the launch of the second volume of his autobiography. Intel unexpectedly announced the immediate retirement of former chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger last week, ending his nearly four-year tenure and ending his attempts to revive the
Taiwan would remain in the same international network for carrying out cross-border payments and would not be marginalized on the world stage, despite jostling among international powers, central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) said yesterday. Yang made the remarks during a speech at an annual event organized by Financial Information Service Co (財金資訊), which oversees Taiwan’s banking, payment and settlement systems. “The US dollar will remain the world’s major cross-border payment tool, given its high liquidity, legality and safe-haven status,” Yang said. Russia is pushing for a new cross-border payment system and highlighted the issue during a BRICS summit in October. The existing system
Convenience store operator Lawson Inc has registered trademarks in Taiwan, sparking rumors that the Japanese chain is to enter the local market. The company on Aug. 30 filed trademarks for the names Lawson and Lawson Station, according to publicly available information from the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Intellectual Property Office. The product categories on the application include some of Lawson’s top-selling items for use in the convenience store market. The discovery has led to speculation online that the popular Japanese chain is to enter the Taiwanese market. However, some pointed out that it might be a preemptive application to avoid others from co-opting the
STRONG GROWTH: AI-related business is stealing the limelight from products like smartphones, and appears not to be affected by seasonality, boding well for local firms Taiwan’s exports last month bounced 9.7 percent from a year earlier to US$41.09 billion, the second-strongest for the same period, as demand for almost all product categories picked up, due partly to preventive attempts on the part of suppliers to dodge potential US tariff hikes, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. The growth momentum would be sustained this month at a pace of 4.5 percent to 7.5 percent, as a stable but uneven global recovery continues, Department of Statistics Director-General Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜) said. Outbound shipments of chips and informations and communication technology (ICT) products expanded by 15.5 percent and 11.7 percent
RSS