CSBC posts higher revenue
CSBC Corp, Taiwan (台船), the nation’s leading shipbuilder, yesterday reported NT$4.01 billion (US$115.41 million) in revenue last month, a 93.15 percent increase from a year ago, because the firm was ahead of schedule in deliveries of ships to its clients, company spokesman Wang Ko-hsuan (王克旋) said.
Wang said CSBC would finish delivering three new ships this month and that it had orders for 58 container ships and 30 military speed boats, at a total cost of NT$120 billion, for completion by October 2012.
Kaohsiung-based CSBC’s major clients include Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運), Wan Hai Lines Ltd (萬海航運), as well as shipping firms in Germany, Japan and South Korea.
Employees return to work
The number of workers on unpaid leave at two of the nation’s science parks has been decreasing significantly since the beginning of this year, statistics provided by the Science Park Administration showed yesterday.
The Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區) said the percentage of workers taking unpaid leave had fallen to 45 percent this month from 70 percent in January, saying the photonics industry had particularly benefited from China’s recent program subsidizing home appliance purchases in rural areas and it had received a massive increase in orders.
The Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學園區) also saw the number of workers on unpaid leave fall to 11,000 at the end of last month, from 15,000 at the end of last year.
China Steel sales down
China Steel Corp (中鋼), the nation’s largest steelmaker, said sales fell 26 percent last month compared with the year earlier.
Sales dropped to NT$12.4 billion, the Kaohsiung-based company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday, without giving a comparative figure.
HTC sees rebound this month
HTC Corp (宏達電), the world’s largest maker of handsets using Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system, said sales would rebound this month after hitting a low point.
“Monthly revenues bottomed out in February and we expect sales to pick up in March,” the Taoyuan-based company said in a statement yesterday.
Year-to-date sales up to the end of last month declined 11 percent to NT$19.2 billion, it said.
Kaohsiung seeing less cargo
The port of Kaohsiung’s container-handling volume recorded a year-on-year decline for the fourth consecutive month in January, mainly because of the severe global economic downturn, statistics released yesterday by the Kaohsiung Harbor Bureau showed.
The volume of containers handled by the port totaled 619,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) for the month, down 28 percent compared with the 867,000 TEU handled in January last year.
Harbor master Tsai Ting-yi (蔡丁義) said volume began declining precipitously in the fourth quarter of last year, with a year-on-year decrease of more than 10 percent recorded in October and more than 24 percent in November and December.
CAL shuffles China flights
China Airlines (CAL, 華航) will increase its number of flights between Taiwan and Hangzhou, China, from three charter flights a week to four, a CAL executive stationed in Shanghai said yesterday.
With more tourists from Hangzhou visiting Taiwan, CAL said it decided to switch one of its charter flights on the Taiwan-Shenzhen route to the Taiwan-Hangzhou route.
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