Search Results for: European Union

Retail prices of manufactured dairy products in Poland are falling, while the costs of production and processing are rising. Market insiders say this is already pushing many small dairy farmers and manufacturers to the edge.

“Production costs for farmers and milk processors have increased dramatically,” said Agnieszka Maliszewska, director of the Polish Chamber of Milk (PIM – Polska Izba Mleka).…

This year, tens of thousands of workers have been laid off by footwear production factories in and around Ho Chi Minh City, the centre of Vietnam’s USD24 billion footwear export industry.

Fo example, Pou Yuen Vietnam, a Taiwanese supplier for global giants including Adidas and Reebok, let go 5,744 employees through June and July, following a round of layoffs impacting 2,358 workers in February. …

Portugal’s footwear industry is trying to maintain its near-shoring position as a western production hub, while attracting more business as a reliable alternative to Asian manufacturing hubs, investing in innovation, quality and sustainability.

Portugal comprises an important part of the remaining European footwear sector, which according to the World Footwear Yearbook 2023 produced just 2.7% of global output in 2022 (1).…

Climate change and generational attitude shifts are driving the increased adoption of resale, repair and reuse initiatives in the leisure, sports and outdoor section of the apparel industry as consumer stigma associated with buying secondhand items is replaced with concern about over-production and protecting finite production resources.…

Higher education leaders in Niger have raised concerns about how last week’s (July 26) military coup my home and already fragile higher education system in this Francophone Sahel country.

As the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) considers force to restore the democratically elected government of President Mohamed Bazoum, elected in April 2021 in the country’s first peaceful transfer of power, students and academics have warned of potential disarray in Niger universities.…

A groundbreaking collaboration between Tunisia and China has yielded plans to develop a pioneering laboratory, solely dedicated to the realm of plasma physics, a key element of nuclear fusion research. The lab would be established in Tunisia’s prestigious National Engineering School of Tunis, within the University of Tunis – El Manar, in central Tunis, Tunisia’s capital.…

Sustainability is not only a marketing buzzword in the packaging sector, but also a legal and environmental necessity, even if it costs more, packaging experts have told Packaging Gateway. Notably, making recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is more expensive than virgin PET, and due to “limited availability and the high cost of recycled content,” PepsiCo used more virgin plastic than planned in 2022 according to its ESG [environmental, social and governance] 2022 report (1) released earlier this year (2023).…

China’s key government economic body has released restrictions on the use of iron oxide pigments and titanium dioxide, the most important white pigment used in the coatings industry. In July (2023), China’s National Development and Reform Commission and related departments issued an updated Notice on Issuing the Energy Efficiency Benchmark Levels and Baseline Levels in Key Industrial Fields, with 11 additional controls, including 11 key areas including titanium dioxide (TiO2).…

Remote working boomed during the Covid-19 pandemic and seems set to stay. For AMLOs working outside of the office, multiple security risks abound but can be mitigated if the right procedures are in place and precautions taken.

The pandemic’s initial and fast push of AMLOs and other compliance professionals out of the office forced financial institutions to scramble to get in-house cyber security measures in place to ensure there were no network breaches.…

Every new information technology is a potential double-edged sword for committing and detecting financial crime, including money laundering and terror finance, and the development of large language model (LLM) processing AI systems, such as ChatGPT, is no exception.

Experts have already raised concerns about how these systems could be abused by money launderers, as well as how they may help obliged entities, FIUs and related law enforcement agencies fight dirty money flows.…