Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union-funded research consortium is developing an industrial system for producing biodegradable plastics from whey, separated from milk curd during cheese-making. Around 30 per cent of the 50 million tonnes of whey produced in Europe annually is currently discarded, and the Euro 1.6 million WHEYPOL project is creating process to synthesise polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) generated from whey into plastic.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed regulations insisting that that all new European Union (EU) passports should contain digital photographs integrated into an inside page and that all visas and residence permits should contain fingerprint records. The passport images would have to be machine readable, and not be stuck on paper, as at present.…

BY KEITN NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN parliamentarian has called for his institution to stop producing 3.5 million sheets of printed paper every week. This amounts to each MEP using more than 1,000 sheets every day in Brussels and Strasbourg. Dutch socialist member Michiel Van Hulten has called for a significant reduction, especially as printed agenda, minutes and memos are irregularly recycled.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank is lending US$40 million to Turkish steel pipe specialist Borusan Holding A to help improve its financial and operational performance, implement quality control initiatives, and strengthen the Borusan group’s corporate governance.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) has corrected its anti-dumping duty on malleable cast iron tube or pipe fittings from Brazil, reducing the rate from 34.8 to 32 per cent. The move by the EU Council of Ministers follows a ruling last year by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that the European Commission had erred when calculating the original duty (erected in 2000).…

BY MONICA DOBIE
CANADIAN steel makers have added a surcharge to the price of their output to compensate for surging costs of scrap and other raw materials. Car and appliance manufacturers and other buyers of steel from Canadian mills must now pay an extra CDN$95 per ton.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed a technical directive that would impose standards on European Union (EU) automotive manufacturers, so that their new cars, sports utility vehicles, minibuses and light vans can be more easily recycled once they are scrapped.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) Council of Ministers has re-imposed 49 per cent definitive anti-dumping duties on cut priced exports into the EU of silicon from China. The move follows a European Commission review of the existing tariffs, (erected in 1997), which concluded that there was large “space capacity” in the Chinese silicon industry, leading to “the likelihood of continuation and recurrence of dumping and a recurrence of injury” to EU producers, “should the measures be repealed in respect of the country concerned.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) is prolonging its dispute with the United States at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) over Washington’s assessment of benefits enjoyed by privatised steel companies from past public subsidies. Following a protracted WTO dispute, the US was last January (2003) ordered to reform its “change in ownership” methodology, through has justified countervailing duties protecting American steel producers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SPECIALIST ferrous metal United States government committee has criticised the recent free trade agreement struck between the US and Australia that will remove tariffs on iron, steel and related products traded between the two countries. The federal inter-sector advisory committee on ferrous ores and metals has concluded the although the deal itself does promote US interests, there are a number of elements that fail to cover concerns “which certainly affect our sector’s economic interests and the equity and reciprocity for the US overall that we seek in US trade agreements.”…