Archive

BY RICHARD HUSRT, in Johannesburg
SOUTH African independent wine and spirits importer, exporter and distributor DGB is entering the second phase of a three-phase expansion of its Wellington base, near Cape Town, in this instance involving a new bottling facility and extra warehousing.…

Keith Nuthall
FINLAND’S tough levy on non-reusable beverage packaging is under attack from the European Commission, which is claiming that the charge could be a disguised and illegal trade restriction. Brussels is threatening to take the Finnish government to the European Court of Justice over the matter, which could order it to reform the system.…

From Alan Osborn
The European Commission has increased its grants for the

restructuring and conversion of vineyards in the EU in the 2002-3 marketing

year by 5 per cent over the 2001-2 figure to 443 million euros (pounds 270

million). The allocation will be topped up by some 42 million euros (pounds

26 million) which was unspent in 2001-2 because not all countries could

justify claims.…

KEITH NUTHALL
APPLICATIONS made by Nicaragua and Germany for the trade in two hardwoods to be controlled under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) have been supported by the CITES secretariat. The species are big-leaf mahogany (Brazilian mahogany) and tree-of-life (pockwood or sonora guaiacum).…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE SPANISH company Logista, a wholesale distributor of tobacco in Spain and Portugal, is to take joint control of Logesta Gestion de Transporte in a move that will extend Logista’s activities into freight forwarding. The European Commission has approved a deal under which Logista will share control with another Spanish company, Gestcamp, which operates in the warehousing sector among others.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TOBACCO companies should be made subject to tougher auditing controls, to enable customs and other regulators to better detect any diversion of products onto the black market, an International Conference on Illicit Tobacco Trade has concluded.

Staged in New York by the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, with the assistance of the United Nations and World Health Organisation, a conference working party decided that “all persons engaged” in the tobacco sector could “be licensed at a national or sub-national level.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PROPOSED international regulations that would have ruled a new product is legally created when tobaccos are blended will probably be rejected, with the chairman of a special World Trade Organisation rules of origin committee recommending that they be deleted.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed formal regulations governing the erection of possible future safeguard restrictions within the European Union against Chinese exports of textile and clothing products. Under the agreement approving China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation, Brussels has the right to impose special temporary safeguard duties until December 2008, where a boom in imports threatens “market disruption.”…

Keith Nuthall
CUSTOMS teams in the European Union have singled out clothing and textile goods for legal proceedings based on pirated and counterfeit goods seized at the EU’s external borders. They account for almost 50 per cent of cases in 2001, despite involving only five per cent of fake copies of any product intercepted, (five million articles of textiles and clothing were seized last year).…

Keith Nuthall
BRAZIL and the European Commission have agreed a Memorandum of

Understanding paving the way for a formal textile trading agreement which, says Brussels, “significantly improves access for textile products on each other’s markets.” The deal removes the quotas on Brazil’s textiles and clothing exports to the EU.…