Search Results for: Brazilian

BY KEITH NUTHALL

IT is a mind-bending question. How on earth, given the complexity and variety of available biofuels, their feedstocks and manufacturing processes, can their relative ‘green-ness’ be measured efficiently? But, to the delight of mathematicians and technical consultants the world over, this toughest of queries has to be answered.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed giving Brazil additional annual import quotas for its sales of sugar in the European Union (EU) to take account of the expansion of the EU through the accession of Romania and Bulgaria. The Commission wants 550,000 tonnes of extra Brazilian raw cane sugar imported annually for refining.…

BY ALAN OSBORN, LUCY JONES and KEITH NUTHALL

INTRODUCTION

CLOTHING and textile production and trade subsidies are under pressure today, as they have not been for many years. There has been a steady trend towards liberalisation in the sector worldwide, stemming from the abolition of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) in January 2005 and with it, then end of restrictive quotas for imports for the WTO’s 152 member countries.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD and KEITH NUTHALL

THE TRI-BORDER area between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay in South America is a notorious breeding ground for illicit activity, and the tobacco industry suffers more than most. Contraband goods of every description pass through Paraguay’s trading hub, Ciudad del Este – CD’s and DVD’s, fake designer clothing, sunglasses and watches, sports shoes, games and electronics, and of course one of the world’s most smuggled and lucrative legal substances: cigarettes.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON, JAMES BURNS, and JULIAN RYALL

With technological change being forced upon the auto manufacturing industry by high oil prices, plants are being retooled faster than in living memory. At such a time, companies are always looking for new ideas and technology.…

BY MARK ROWE

THE PSYCHOLOGY of colour has fascinated philosophers and scientists down the ages, so it is perhaps unsurprising that the world’s paint companies devote much of their time to working out why consumers prefer certain colours for certain everyday items – and why these tastes vary so much across the world.…

BY MARK ROWE

THE CHOCOLATE giant Mars has begun work on sequencing the cocoa genome, a move that it says could dramatically improve the health and yields of cocoa growers around the world, guaranteeing food manufacturers with more reliable and high quality supplies.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

SUSTAINABILITY has moved firmly to the top of the corporate agenda in the oils and fats sector following Unilever’s announcement in May that it intended to have all of its palm oil certified sustainable by 2015. By any measure this would be a bold pledge but coming from the world’s largest consumer of palm oil (Unilever takes 4% of total global production to make its food and cosmetic products) it serves additionally to raise the bar for others.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD

AS the price of petroleum climbs increasingly makes alternative energy sources such as biofuels sound increasingly attractive to many countries that had dismissed them in the past, Brazil, the largest consumer of ethanol in the world with over 30 years of experience developing their biofuels industry, has many lessons to offer.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD

CHINA’S entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2002 and the recent end of quotas in the US and European markets have created gigantic changes in the textile industry worldwide, with developing markets like those in Latin America expected to suffer the most from these shifts.…