Search Results for: Czech Republic

BY ALAN OSBORN

CUBA has always been crucial in the cigar industry, but with the prospect of political change being almost tangible, the island is now the key focus of this premium tobacco sector. For the first time in many years there’s a sense that events could be moving towards a thaw in the 45-year long freeze in relations between the USA and Cuba and an end to the embargo on sales of Cuban cigars into America.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EURO 2.58 million international research project is being organised by the European Union’s (EU) Eureka research network charged with investigating the design of new laminated packages – from paper to aluminium. Its aim is to develop by June 2010 new packs that extend shelf life of food products, said a note from Eureka.…

BY BILL CORCORAN, in South Africa

SOUTH Africa is in a race against time to ensure the country’s

burgeoning economy is not crippled by fuel shortages, forcing its oil and gas companies to innovate to ensure security of supply, notably from neighbouring countries.…

BY MARK ROWE

THE EXPANSION of the European Union (EU) eastwards has been welcomed by most industries, and the tobacco market is no exception, although the EU enlargement has also created a series of problems for the industry to manage. The accession of Bulgaria to the EU club in 2007 brought a significant tobacco industry player into the fold.…

BY MARK GODFREY, in Beijing

A YEAR after China began enforcing its Law of the People’s Republic of China on Anti-Money Laundering – effective from January 2007 – observers are wary about the ability of the country’s understaffed enforcement agencies to keep pace with huge inflows of questionable funds into China’s booming economy.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EURO 3 million international research project is to create multi-processor micro-chips able to operate key in-car systems simultaneously, boosting their speed and efficiency. The European Union (EU) is funding Euro 2 million of the MERASA project, which includes Britain’s Rapita Systems Ltd; Honeywell in the Czech Republic; the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre; Augsburg University, Germany; and the Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse.…

BY MARK ROWE

RUSSIA’S booming economy means that those old images of grey queues for low-grade fuel to run Moskvich and other Soviet era cars are long gone. Instead, the country’s fuel retail sector has an incentive for dramatically overhauling the present state of affairs, which predominantly involves poorly established, locally run chains and Western chains fighting – sometimes unsuccessfully – for market share.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

WHILE most informed people now agree it is important that greenhouse gas emissions are reduced across the global economy, the question about which methods to choose for achieving this have generated far less consensus and nowhere is this truer than with the road transport sector.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE CZECH Republic has been threatened with European Court of Justice legal action by the European Commission over Prague’s failure to accede to a EURATOM agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This covers commitments regarding the UN Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, preventing the diversion of nuclear materials and technology from the Czech Republic for producing nuclear weapons.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

RUSSIA and eastern European countries will be eager consumers of car rental and company fleet leasing services in the next few years but would-be players in these markets should know that a slew of administrative problems, supply delays and tax complications may await them.…