Search Results for: Saudi Arabian

BY PAUL COCHRANE

THE MULTI-BILLION dollar cosmetics and fragrances industry in the Middle East’s six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries has had a mixed few years in the wake of the global financial crisis, made more unpredictable by demographic change and purchasing behaviour shifts.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE

MUSLIM fashion is traditionally conservative – a far cry from the often flashy fashion runways of the West. But a younger Muslim generation of female ‘hijabistas’ is combining Islamic values with high fashion, working hijabs and other head coverings into high-end, high fashion knitted and crocheted outfits.…

BY MARK ROWE

IS the recession’s worst over for the jet fuel aviation industry? Passenger traffic during this late spring and summer has risen sharply compared with flights year-on-year, giving hope to an industry that Giovanni Bisignani, director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), described last year as "structurally sick".…

BY PAUL COCHRANE

CONFECTIONERY manufacturers in the Middle East are not only ideally placed geographically to sell their products to the rich European Union (EU) market, they are assisted by a series of free trade agreements either in place, or in the works.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE TOWN of Asbestos in French-speaking Québec, Canada – named after the mineral that underpins its economy – is waiting to see whether its provincial government will approve a Canadian dollar CAD58 million (US dollar USD56 million) loan enabling an underground mine to tap an immense deposit.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE

DEMAND for more environmentally-friendly coatings and paints is on the rise in the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, driven by government-backed infrastructure projects that are forcing paint manufacturers to comply with strict requirements.

Still a specialised product, ‘green’ paints account for less than 10% of sales in the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) US dollar USD$300 million paint market and the USD$1 billion Saudi Arabian market, according to Bassam Bizri, general manager of Chemipaint in the UAE (NOTE – SPELLING IS CORRECT).…

BY PAUL COCHRANE

CORRUPTION, bribery and cronyism have long been a part of business in the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, with media reports of such malpractice few and far between yet alone prosecutions. But this taboo topic has started to hit headlines in the Gulf over the past year as prominent businessmen have been arrested for fraud, bribery cases investigated and governmental units set up to tackle the problem.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE, AHMAD PATHONI, GAVIN BLAIR, RAGHAVENDRA VERMA, WANG FANGQING, HELEN FLUSFELDER, KARRYN MILLER, KEITH NUTHALL and ALAN OSBORN

THE BRITISH writer Oscar Wilde wrote: "A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE

THE KINGDOM of Saudi Arabia’s USD$1 billion paint sector market is projected to return to double-digit growth this year on the back of massive government spending, following static growth in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE INTERNATIONAL Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has been pushing for more synchronised RNAV 5 area navigation within the Middle East. A regional meeting in Cairo has agreed there is a "need to harmonise the implementation of RNAV 5 in the MID [Middle East] Region."…