Everest Textile Co (宏遠興業), which makes fabrics and garments, yesterday said two new plants in Ethiopia and the US are scheduled to start operations in the first half of this year.
The plant in Ethiopia is to manufacture garments for the company’s brand name customers from Europe, while the US facility is to supply knitted fabrics and garments to customers in the US, the firm said.
The two new factories are expected to increase the sales contribution from garments, which currently generate less than 2 percent of the company’s total sales, an Everest official said by telephone.
Revenue from woven and knitted fabrics accounts for more than 80 percent of the company’s total sales, while textured yarns generate nearly 10 percent, company data showed.
The official, who declined to be named, said the company plans to build another plant in Haiti because of lower labor costs.
“We have to keep seeking overseas sites for new factories, as the fabric manufacturing process is quite labor-intensive,” he told the Taipei Times.
Everest operates three plants in Taiwan, China and Thailand.
Everest’s local peers, including Lealea Enterprise Co (力麗) and Eclat Textile Co (儒鴻), also plan to accelerate overseas capacity expansion plans this year.
Lealea, which mainly produces textured polyester yarn, has approved a plan to invest as much as US$50 million in its first overseas factory in Indonesia.
The new plant is scheduled to begin operations in the first half of this year, with a target capacity of 4 million yards of polyester yarn per year, Lealea spokesman Chen Han-ching (陳漢卿) said by telephone yesterday.
The plant is to distribute about half of its products to customers in Indonesia, a nation of 255 million people, Chen said.
Lealea is also considering building another plant in Vietnam because of lower tariffs on exports to the EU, he added.
Local media reported that Eclat plans to expand production capacity in Vietnam after dissolving its wholly owned clothing plants in China last month.
Two new plants in Vietnam are scheduled to begin operations in the first and third quarters of this year respectively, and are expected to manufacture about 950,000 articles of clothing per month, boosting Eclat’s capacity by 20 percent annually, local media reported.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
RSS