Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INDIAN government is planning to set up 27 so-called ‘food parks,’ dedicated industrial estates for food processing industries.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
RESEARCHERS from Melbourne, Australia, have invented an alternative to plastic packaging, made from corn starch. It is biodegradable, breaking down in water. It is being used for inner (secondary) packaging but researchers hope they can make it withstand the elements for use in outer packaging too.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
RESEARCHERS at the Harvard School of Public Health have found that eating too many hot dogs is bad for your health. Their study, published in an American diabetes journal, found that a diet heavy in processed meats – typically five or more portions a week – including hot dogs and bacon, increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes by about 50 per cent in men.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament’s fisheries committee has called for the EU fish processing industry to be included in the ongoing review of the European Common Fisheries Policy.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE PHILIPPINES government has imposed safeguard duties on imports of ceramic floor and wall tiles, to protect its domestic industry from a boom in trade. Following a complaint from the Philippines’ Ceramic Tiles Manufacturers Association, Manila has decided to levy a duty of Pesos 5.40/kg for the first year, (backdated to January), Pesos 4.30/kg for the second year and Pesos 3.50/kg for the third year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PRINTING equipment and supplies imported from the United States are to be a focus of retaliatory tariffs imposed by the European Union following the erection of controversial ‘safeguard’ duties by Washington to protect its steel industry.

The European Commission has announced that it is asking EU ministers to approve a selected range of products, where the levying of duty will cause the most pain to US exporters, in a bid to try and force the Bush administration to lift its tariffs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union ministers have been asked to extend the legal duty on EU steel manufacturers to supply substantial amounts of statistics about their outputs and inputs, at least until the end of this year. With the expiry of the European Coal and Steel Community in July, the regulation forcing them to collate the figures would have lapsed, but the European Commission has formally tabled that it be extended until December, following calls from EU policy units and national ministries that the statistics should continue to be made available.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A LAPSED double-checking system for imports of Romanian steel products into the European Union is to be reinstated from July, assuming EU ministers approve a proposal from the European Commission. The system was established when Romania and the EU signed an association agreement, (a broad trade and political relations deal), in 1996, but its legal authority lapsed last December.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development is planning to lend Euro 15.9 million to Italy’s Duferco, to fund buy-outs of minority shareholders in Russian grain oriented steel producer VIZ-Stahl. It is already controlled and managed by Duferco, and the bank thinks full-ownership would lead to “full commercial development” by a company “with a clear strategic view on the steel sector and proven ability in acquiring and turning around steel plants.”…

BY MONICA DOBIE
CANADIAN consultancies Wardrop Engineering and Micon International are to offer joint advice on metallurgical projects, from initial resource estimation, feasibility studies and operational analysis, to site closure. Micon’s specialisms include ore reserve estimation, metallurgical design, mineral property valuation and monitoring of project development for international banking syndicates.…