Taiwan Rep / Notes

Kaohsiung has 9% of Taiwan's metal products plants and 37% of those with fastener words in their names. We counted.

Taiwan publishes a list of registered factories in production, with their addresses and industries. Filtering it for plants with fastener words in their registered names, such as screw, nut, bolt or washer, gives 366. More than a third are in Kaohsiung, and a fifth in a single district, Gangshan. Here's how we counted, where they are, and what a name-based count misses.

Updated October 11, 2026. Counts are from the in-production factory list labeled August 2026 (file last modified September 18), downloaded that day.

If you buy fasteners from Taiwan, a lot of your supplier addresses probably end in 高雄市, Kaohsiung. That impression is easy to test, because the list of registered factories in production is public. This note explains the list we used and how we filtered it, shows how the plants are spread by city and district, and covers what the count can't tell you before you plan a visit.

The list and the filter

The Industrial Development Administration (產業發展署) publishes its registered factory list as open data (dataset 6569 on data.gov.tw). The file we downloaded on October 11, 2026 was last modified on September 18 and is labeled August 2026. It is the list of factories in production: 101,032 rows, each with the plant's name, registration number, business number, address, industry and main products. Eight rows carry a suspension order instead of "in production", and one registration appears twice. All 366 rows we kept are distinct and marked "in production".

The main products field stops at three-digit codes. Screws and bolts sit inside product code 259, "other metal products", along with springs, wire products and much else, so the codes alone can't separate a screw plant from a spring plant. We filtered on the registered plant name instead, keeping rows that contain any of the Chinese words for screw, nut, bolt, rivet, fastener or washer. That gave 366 plants. Of those, 350 also list product code 259. That fits, though since 259 covers much more than fasteners it doesn't prove each match makes them.

The 366 plants belong to 308 different business numbers, because some companies register more than one plant.

Where they are

To see whether that's a fastener pattern or just a metalworking one, compare it with all in-production plants that list metal products manufacturing (金屬製品製造業, code 25) anywhere in their industry field. There are 35,998 of those in the same list, and Kaohsiung has 3,266 of them, about 9%. Taichung (8,403) and Changhua (6,782) have far more metalworking plants than Kaohsiung. Among fastener-named plants the order flips: Kaohsiung's 37% share is about four times its share of metalworking overall.

Inside Kaohsiung the cluster is tight. Gangshan, Luzhu, Alian and Yanchao are neighboring districts in the north of the city and together hold 119 plants, a third of the national count. Within Gangshan, three li (neighborhoods) account for 44 of the 78: Jiaxing (嘉興里, 21), Huagang (華崗里, 12) and Benzhou (本洲里, 11).

One thing the registration numbers show

Our registry note explains that a factory registration number starting with S is a "specific factory" registration for a previously unregistered plant, valid at most until March 19, 2040. Under the Factory Management Act, the routes to it are for qualifying low-pollution plants that were already operating without registration on or before May 19, 2016, and for plants that held the earlier temporary registration (Articles 28-1, 28-5 and 28-6). Among the 366 fastener-named plants, 79 have an S number. Kaohsiung accounts for 45 of them, a third of its 137 plants. Changhua has 16.

An S number says nothing about quality. It does tell you the registration has an end date. One route to a regular registration runs through changing the land's use designation and then meeting the normal registration requirements (Articles 28-10 and 28-11). For a long-term supply agreement, it's a fair question to ask what the plan is for that site.

What the count misses

Back to the gap in the title: 9% of metal products plants, 37% of fastener-named ones. The registry does show that fastener plants cluster in northern Kaohsiung far more than metalworking in general does. It doesn't show how much they make, and the name filter has blind spots:

• Makers without fastener words in their name. Chun Yu Works (春雨工廠), the wire rod and bolt maker we used in the registry note, has seven plant registrations on the in-production list, six in Gangshan and one in Zihguan. None is counted, because 春雨工廠 contains none of our words. Large makers that use a brand or group name will be missing in the same way.
• The rest of the chain. Wire drawing, heat treatment and plating shops serve fastener makers, and a name filter for fastener words isn't designed to find them.
• Plants, not output. A three-person shop and a plant with hundreds of workers each count as one.
• Unregistered and small shops. Where the general thresholds apply, a plant below both 150 square meters of plant floor and 75 kW of motors and electric heat combined doesn't have to register, as the registry note explains. Some categories have lower thresholds.

So read 366 as a count of plants whose registered names use fastener words, and the table as a picture of where those plants cluster, not of where the tonnage comes from.

For context on output, the Ministry of Economic Affairs' production index for the whole screw, nut and rivet industry (2021 average = 100) averaged 76.6 in 2025 and 73.9 in the first half of 2026. In other words, the industry was producing about a quarter less than its 2021 average. That index covers the industry, not just these 366 plants.

What this means if you're planning a visit

For buyers, the cluster is mainly a logistics fact. If your suppliers are in Gangshan, Luzhu, Alian or Yanchao, several can often be seen in one trip from Kaohsiung. If one is in New Taipei and another in Tainan, plan on separate travel days.

Before going, check each supplier's plants in the factory registry, as the registry note shows, and match the address on the record to the one you were given. The count here tells you where named fastener plants cluster. The record tells you where your supplier has registered plants. Production records, and a visit where needed, show which one makes your parts.

Counts are from the August 2026 in-production list (archive last modified September 18, 2026) and will change as plants register, move or close. The keyword filter is our own method; you can repeat it on the same file.

Sources

• Registered factory list (登記工廠名錄), Industrial Development Administration, via data.gov.tw; in-production list (生產中工廠清冊) labeled August 2026, file dated September 18, 2026, downloaded October 11, 2026
• Factory registry public search (工廠公示資料查詢系統), Industrial Development Administration
• Industrial production index (工業生產指數), screw, nut and rivet manufacturing (2591), Ministry of Economic Affairs, data to June 2026
• Factory Management Act (工廠管理輔導法)