Search Results for: Australia

AS governments worldwide loosen lockdowns imposed to impede the spread of Covid-19, energy companies are assessing their health and safety policies to ensure workplaces are not new infection hotspots, protecting workers and hence production.

These changes come as energy industries downscale workloads to reflect a collapse in demand for their output.…

THE NEED to actively recharge electric vehicles makes them less attractive to consumers, especially when batteries can take eight hours to charge. So, the development of ambient technologies that enable EVs to charge themselves as they operate has been a key focus of automotive R&D.…

HONG Kong textile industry leaders have tried to reassure clothing traders and manufacturers operating from the territory they will not face serious harm by any change of diplomatic recognition prompted by the passage of a new HK security law. Speaking to just-style, Louis Chan, assistant principal economist (global research), for the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), claimed that sourcing offices in HK would continue to operate smoothly: “As long as the subject merchandise is not made in Hong Kong, the possible revocation of the special trading relationship or any suspension of HKCO (Hong Kong country of origin) recognition should have little or even no direct impacts on HK’s re-exports (of those items),” he argued.…

Representatives of international food brands and analysts have told just-food that China’s State Council’s approval of 46 new pilot zones for companies conducting cross-border e-commerce, a move designed to help the country’s economy withstand the blows landed by the Covid-19 epidemic, also present opportunities to foreign food brands selling to Chinese consumers. …

MAJOR European food and drink industry associations have asked the European Union (EU) and Britain to consider agreeing a temporary holding Brexit deal, preserving EU/UK free trade, once the current transitional period involving the UK follows EU rules, expires on December 31.…

Supermarkets and convenience stores in Taiwan are making room for an expanding and dizzying array of fresh milk products and with some of the highest consumer milk prices in the world and local dairy farmers struggling to meet demand, especially in the peak summer months, this is good news for exporting overseas producers.…

AUSTRALIA’S existing regulatory framework for importing and manufacturing industrial chemicals, the National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme (NICNAS) will be replaced by a new system called the Australian Industrial Chemicals Introduction Scheme (AICIS), starting July 1. The AICIS covers a broad range of chemicals and polymers used in adhesives, paints and solvents among many others. …

USE of the so-called ‘wonder material’ graphene in the energy sector is growing fast, with its thin sheets of carbon atoms in a honeycomb shape, stronger than diamond yet flexible, offering excellent thermal and electronic conductive properties. Given it also offers an extremely high surface to material ratio, graphene energy storage and capture uses are being developed to make batteries, supercapacitors, and solar panels.…

AUSTRALIAN wool producers are stockpiling wool and avoiding auction sales with Covid-19 hitting their key market, China. The Australian wool industry is important. It delivered exports worth Australian dollars AUD4.15 billion (USD2.6 billion) in 2018-19, according to Australian government figures – https://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/research-topics/agricultural-commodities/agricultural-commodities-trade-data#2019.…

QUANTUM computers are now being developed that may offer accounting practices computing power to strengthen audits, but which also pose some serious cybersecurity concerns.

After decades of theorising, quantum computing is here. Google last October (2019) announced it had developed a device which it claimed took 200 seconds to sample data showing how a quantum computer works one million times (1), a task it claimed would take a standard digital super-computer 10,000 years.…