MHI Vestas Offshore Wind A/S, the world’s second-biggest offshore wind turbine maker, is planning to use Taiwan as a hub to assemble and export turbines as it aims to extend its footprint in Asia.
Taiwan has emerged as a hot spot for offshore wind as President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) works to phase out nuclear energy.
“For us, Taiwan will be an excellent platform for export to Southeast Asia” because of Taiwan’s push for offshore wind power and the proximity to markets such as Vietnam, said Philippe Kavafyan, chief executive officer for the venture between Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd of Japan and Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems A/S, in an interview on Friday last week.
MHI Vestas this year announced that it would use Taiwanese manufacturers, including Tien Li Offshore Wind Technology Co (天力離岸風電) and China Steel Machinery Corp (中鋼機械), to supply turbine blades, towers and materials.
“We don’t really plan to open our own factory,” Kavafyan said, adding that such a plant would be set up by local partners. “Over time, there is a full plan to industrialize components and subsystems to increase the content we will do in Taiwan.”
MHI Vestas has been picked as a preferred supplier for Taiwanese offshore wind projects being developed by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and China Steel Corp (中鋼), with a combined capacity of at least 900 megawatts, Kavafyan said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day