Search Results for: China

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC), of the World Bank, is seeking to prime-pump a new plastics sub-sector in China – for medical devices, where the country is overwhelmingly dependent on imports. The IFC is lending US$20 million to Shandong Weigao Group Medical Polymer Company Ltd, China’s leading manufacturer of single-use medical devices.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
PAINT and coatings manufacturers in the Asia Pacific region could be storing up trouble for themselves if they fail to grasp and act on the full implications of the European Union’s (EU) newly minted REACH system for classifying and labelling chemicals.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE SECRETARIAT of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) has published export quotas for caviar for 2007 from sturgeon in the Heilongjiang/Amur River between Russia and China. The quotas will be 29% of 2005 levels – the last year for which quotas were approved, creating a 3,761kg limit on beluga exports, the world’s most valuable caviar.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A BID by a South Korea fibre exporter to have low melt polyester staple fibres (LMP) excluded from existing European Union (EU) antidumping duties on synthetic polyester staple fibres (PSF) has been refused by the European Commission. These particular duties are levied on exports from China, Saudi Arabia, Belarus and South Korea, but South Korea exporter and producer Saehan Industries Inc claimed LMP should be excluded, claiming they “have different basic physical and chemical characteristics and end-uses” to other PSF types, having “inherent binding properties.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN AMERICAN anti-piracy group has welcomed a flood of arrests in China of cigarette counterfeiters, saying such tough action is crucial to clean up this intellectual property crime hotspot. A report from the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition has hailed figures from China’s state tobacco monopoly that more than 1,700 cigarette counterfeiters were arrested during 2006.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed imposing definitive anti-dumping duties on exports into the European Union (EU) of strawberries from China. The protective tariffs would range from Euro 169.90 per tonne to Euro 204.50 per tonne, and would cover cooked, uncooked and frozen tomatoes, with or without added sugar or other sweeteners.…

BY JULIAN RYALL, in Tokyo
TASTES and trends come and go in cosmetics sectors, but the Japanese cosmetics market is arguably the most volatile of them all. With as many as 1,000 companies vying for a slice of the action – ranging from domestic names that have projected themselves around the world to foreign corporations bringing the chic of Paris or New York and small-scale specialists – the personal care products industry here needs to be constantly evolving.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States’ diplomatic service is surely the largest and best resourced international network of experts in the world, and this is born out by the depth of the narcotics strategy report – or INCSR to use its acronym.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
HEADS of government of the European Union (EU) have taken a significant step towards world leadership in the climate battle by pledging themselves to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020 (from 1990 levels) and raising the total share of energy produced by renewables to 20% by the same date.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
CHINESE scientists may have found a way for people who suffer from seafood allergies to eat prawns without the fear of an adverse allergic reaction. The Ocean University of China, Qingdao, has found that treating prawns with a combination of heat and irradiation significantly reduced the level of reactive allergen proteins found in the food.…