King Yuan Electronics Co (京元電子) yesterday said it would shut down its factories for 48 hours to be thoroughly disinfected amid concern over COVID-19 infections linked to its manufacturing campus in Miaoli County.
As of yesterday, 67 King Yuan employees, mostly migrant workers from the Philippines, had tested positive for the disease after a large-scale rapid screening program was launched for the company’s 7,300 workers.
King Yuan, a chip testing and packaging service provider, had resisted halting production for fear of disrupting supply, kindling anger among employees and nearby residents.
Photo provided by King Yuan Electronics Co via CNA
King Yuan, headquartered in Hsinchu City, counts handset chip supplier MediaTek Inc (聯發科), display driver IC maker Novatek Microelectronics Corp (聯詠) and international corporations among its customers.
The production disruption would reduce output and revenue alike by between 4 and 6 percent this month, as its six plants in Hsinchu, and Miaoli’s Tongluo (銅鑼) and (竹南) Jhunan townships would shut down.
King Yuan posted NT$2.86 billion (US$103.17 million) in revenue last month, expanding 10.72 percent from NT$2.58 billion in May last year. That brought the company’s revenue in the first five months of this year to NT$12.17 billion, up 8.87 percent year-on-year.
The shutdown would not affect its financial performance for the full year this year, the company said.
King Yuan was the world’s No. 8 chip testing and packaging service provider last quarter, with revenue of NT$267 million, a tally market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) showed.
That gave King Yuan a market share of 3.7 percent.
TRADE WAR: Tariffs should also apply to any goods that pass through the new Beijing-funded port in Chancay, Peru, an adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump said A veteran adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump is proposing that the 60 percent tariffs that Trump vowed to impose on Chinese goods also apply to goods from any country that pass through a new port that Beijing has built in Peru. The duties should apply to goods from China or countries in South America that pass through the new deep-water port Chancay, a town 60km north of Lima, said Mauricio Claver-Carone, an adviser to the Trump transition team who served as senior director for the western hemisphere on the White House National Security Council in his first administration. “Any product going
TECH SECURITY: The deal assures that ‘some of the most sought-after technology on the planet’ returns to the US, US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said The administration of US President Joe Biden finalized its CHIPS Act incentive awards for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), marking a major milestone for a program meant to bring semiconductor production back to US soil. TSMC would get US$6.6 billion in grants as part of the contract, the US Department of Commerce said in a statement yesterday. Though the amount was disclosed earlier this year as part of a preliminary agreement, the deal is now legally binding — making it the first major CHIPS Act award to reach this stage. The chipmaker, which is also taking up to US$5 billion
High above the sparkling surface of the Athens coastline, the cranes for building the 50-floor luxury tower centerpiece of Greece’s future “smart city” look out over the Saronic Gulf. At their feet, construction machinery stirs up dust. Its backers say the 8 billion euro (US$8.43 billion) project financed by private funds is a symbol of Greece’s renaissance after the years of financial stagnation that saw investors flee the country. However, critics see it more as a future “ghetto for the rich.” It is hard to imagine that 10km from the Acropolis, a new city “three times the size of Monaco”
STRUGGLING BUSINESS: South Korea’s biggest company and semiconductor manufacturer’s buyback fuels concerns that it could be missing out on the AI boom Samsung Electronics Co plans to buy back about 10 trillion won (US$7.2 billion) of its own stock over the next year, putting in motion one of the larger shareholder return programs in its history. South Korea’s biggest company would repurchase the stock in stages over the coming 12 months, it said in a regulatory filing on Friday. As a first step, it would buy back about 3 trillion won of paper starting today up until February next year, all of which it would cancel. The board would deliberate on how best to effect the remaining 7 trillion won of buybacks. The move
RSS