Thanks to growing R&D spending by Taiwan's enterprises along with continual price drops of raw materials, the overall value-added ratio by Taiwan’s manufacturing industries hit a 5-year zenith of 24.8 percent in 2014, slightly higher than the corresponding figure of 23.3 percent in S. Korea, according to the latest report issued by Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) ...

To keep upgrading Taiwan’s metal industry, the Metal Industries Research & Development Centre (MIRDC), a government-funded R&D body on the island, is joining hands with the Institute for Materials Research (IMR) of Tohoku University of Japan on the development of additive manufacturing technology and related metallic materials. In mid-December 2015, the CEO H.C. Fu of MIRDC and Dr. K. Takanash...

Taiwan's Bureau of Energy of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has further loosened the limits on non-bidding contracts for solar-equipment installations in an effort to boost such installations throughout Taiwan to 500 megawatts as planned for 2016. In the new year, non-bidding contracts of the installations on the island are applicable to 100-kilowatt projects, which has been raised fr...

The European Commission has preliminarily ruled that 21 of the 23 Taiwanese makers shipping solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and cells to the continent do not circumvent duties, freeing them from the punitive tariff rate of 64.9 percent. The exempted manufacturers include Motech Industries Inc., Neo Solar Power Corp., Gintech Energy Corp., Apollo Solar Energy Co., Ltd., Solartech Energy Corp., S...

Taiwan's Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), the Taichung City Government, and San-Kang Industrial Association (SKIA) recently announced that they will set up the "Aerospace 4.0 Industrial Cluster", an industrial hub to specifically develop aerospace business opportunities in the Taichung City Precision Machinery Innovation Technology Park in central Ta...

While Taiwanese makers have come a long way since the 1970s when they mostly filled export orders based on buyer specifications to offer OEM (original equipment manufacturing) service, which later evolved to ODM (original design manufacturing) along with changing market structure and rising technological, design capacities on the island, the liberalization of the Chinese market, rising production...

Committed to meeting evolving sourcing trends of global manufacturers and buyers who look for industrial parts and related production processes for wide-ranging applications, CENS (China Economic News Service) will soon launch its new buyer guide, Taiwan Industry Suppliers (TIS). TIS will be launched as a hard-copy guide around the end of November, with the e-edition to be accessible on CENS....

Amid optimism towards recovery of the global steel market, Taiwan-based China Steel Corp. (CSC), the island’s largest steelmaker by size, is widely expected by market observers to raise its nominal prices of domestically-sold steel for Q4 on August 26, when the firm will announce new prices. The reported expectation for higher steel prices to be charged by CSC in Q4 than in Q3 makes sense, giv...

Impacted by steadily shrinking exports and local economy battered by a slowing Chinese economy, recent upheavals in the Chinese stock market, dropping oil and commodity prices, Taiwan’s industrial production index (IPI) continuously dropped by 1.35 percent year-on-year (YoY) to 106.42 in June, albeit having inched up only 0.02 percent over May, according to the latest report issued by the Ministr...

Apparently shrugging off impact from protracted downtrend in the global air cargo industry, as well as betting on better prospects on the back of lower fuel prices, EVA Airways Corporation (EVA Air), Taiwan’s top-2 airline by size, has just finalized an order for five new Boeing 777F freighters for less than NT$50 billion (US$1.58 billion) as part of its fleet expansion plan that involves NT$65.5...