Search Results for: Australia

BY MATTHEW BRACE
THE AUSTRALIAN government wants to increase biofuels production to 350 million litres per annum by the end of the decade, to encourage canegrowers to switch from sugar to ethanol production, despite a recent report saying the policy could cut between A$70.9 million (US$52.2 million) and A$74.3 million (US$54.7 million) from GDP in 2010 because of costly subsidies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SHOE industry members of a specialist United States committee have strongly backed the US-Australia free trade agreement. Representatives on the sector advisory committee on footwear, leather and leather products welcomed its restrictive rules of origin (protecting shoe-makers) and lengthy 10-year tariff phase-outs for 17 protective footwear items of particular concern.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AMERICAN food processors are opposing the new Australia-USA free trade deal because it excludes sugar, preventing them securing it more cheaply from Australian cane growers. Commenting during ratification debates, the US government technical advisory committee for trade in processed foods said sugar’s exclusion “lacks economic justification and raises questions about the equity of the agreement.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SPECIALIST United States government committee has criticised the USA-Australia free trade agreement. The agricultural technical advisory committee for trade in animal and animal products said the deal failed to remove “unscientific” sanitary regulations restricting US pork and poultry exports, and noted opposition from American cattle producers to widening import quotas for Australian beef.…

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.”…

BY MONICA DOBIE
AUSTRALIA’S largest brewers, Foster’s and Lion Nathan, have shifted their marketing focus by spending more money promoting brands for the under-30’s market, rather than their more established lines. According to the Melbourne Age newspaper, both companies invested heavily in campaigns advertising youth-oriented brands in 2003, to curtail a decline in beer consumption due to the popularity of alcopops.…

BY EDWARD PETERS
THE PAST decade has seen China grasp an increasing share of the world’s cosmetic packaging industry. Low production prices and international manufacturing standards — to say nothing of an increasing appreciation of the beauty business — have all contributed to the People’s Republic upping its packaging profile.…

KEITH NUTHALL
AUSTRALIA and the United States have agreed to mutually remove tariffs on textile and clothing traded between them, with duties on products meeting set rules of origin standards being phased out within 15 years. This, said a US Trade Representative Office note on a new American-Australian free trade deal, would “promote new opportunities for US and Australian fibre, yarn, fabric and apparel manufacturing.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A USA-Australia trade deal could be threatened by excluded Australian sugar producers, who have threatened their influence within the Australian senate to stall ratification as their US sugar export quota remains at 87,000 tonnes. Australian Canegrowers president Jim Pedersen said Canberra “has an obligation to let us share in some of the (deal’s) benefits”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE AUSTRALIAN aluminium industry will be a key beneficiary of a new free trade deal between its government and the USA that removes all tariffs on metals traded between the two countries, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has claimed.…