President Ma, Premier Mao, Secretary-General Tseng, and Minister Deng of MOEA paid a visit to Hong Shen Propeller Company Limited, a medium-large propeller plant and the largest player in the trade. Chairman Cheng Chen Yi personally received the entourage and introduced the latest endplate propeller of Hong Shen.
The President appreciated the briefing on future developments of Hong Shen, and rendered his affirmation to the unceasing devotion of resources onto the establishment of product R&D, as well as the company’s investment in as high as 8.3% of R&D talents. For Hong Shen and others in the industry are the pioneers who have made use of endplate propeller on high-speed vessels to help to enhance power efficiency by about 5% and reduce vibration and noise to as much as 60%. In view of such cutting edge technology, endplate propeller can definitely be installed on high-end yachts to greatly elevate their level of comfort while lowering energy consumption.
With its consistent and stable growth, Hong Shen has, for a long period of time, worked to enhance its manufacturing capability of propeller to be on par with the standards of the United States and Japan. With its R&D foundation deeply rooted in Taiwan, Hong Shen’s market has reached as far and wide as more than 27 countries around the world, including major enterprises as Rolls Royce of the US, Schotter of Germany, Kawasaki Heavy Industry of Japan, and Berg Propulsion AB of Sweden and other major ship equipment companies. Such successful experiences and business mode are in compliance with the government’s policy on industrial structure transformation. As such, the company is now actively developing strategies and approaches to promote "high-value products" through the industrial upgrading and transformation project.
During the visit, Chairman Cheng suggested the government to proactively promote ship building, work as much as possible to facilitate domestic industry to participate in project tendering, since domestic industry lacks related technology and has to rely on overseas enterprises to obtain crucial technology. In response, President Ma said "MIT submarines" is an important national policy and is to be implemented in steps from past workability study, approach evaluation, and gradually to the stage of technology. The President furthered emphasized the level of Taiwan’s ship-building standards being on par with those of other countries and Taiwan being equipped with the capability of making propeller for navy vessels. It is, therefore, anticipated that the ship-building industry would stimulate the development of propeller production in Taiwan, thus boosting employment opportunity, cutting down time-span of maintenance and lowering maintenance cost, and helping to upgrade domestic industry.