Search Results for: Finland

BY KEITH NUTHALL

FINLAND’S VTT Technical Research Centre is coordinating a project involving the production of biofuels from rotting fish waste. The Euro 2.5 million European Union-funded ENERFISH project is using waste form a Vietnam catfish-processing plant as feedstock. A biodiesel production plant will be built next door to quickly commercialise technology developed during the three-year project.…

BY MARK ROWE

THE COSMETICS markets in Scandinavia, as elsewhere in the developed world, face an uncertain 2009. Iceland’s economic crisis is well documented but the few surviving local producers are presenting a determined face to the challenges they face. On the other hand, the markets of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark look likely to slow after healthy growth in 2008 (this growth almost universally excluded sunscreens, on account of the wet summer of 2008), but also to escape the worst of the problems.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has issued a European Union (EU)-wide alert about the discovery of melamine contamination in lemon puff biscuits from Sri Lanka. The warning was made via the EU’s RASFF food safety alert system. This network also recently warned about the discovery in Finland of aflatoxins in groundnut kernels imported from Germany, originally grown in India.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EUROPEAN Union (EU) research project is spending Euro 6 million on studying ways of synthesising medicines from plant cell extracts rather than live plants. Scientists in the SmartCell project are developing tools to manufacture cell collections able to produce pharmaceutically active substances on a large scale.…

By Alan Osborn

The failure of business to invest significantly in innovation projects remains the major weakness in the European Union’s (EU) research picture, says the European Commission. While there is "substantial progress" in some aspects of the EU’s innovation performance, investments by business in R&D and IT projects "are still relatively weak, especially if compared to the US and Japan," claims Brussels.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AN EXTRAORDINARY European Union (EU) Council of Ministers energy meeting has agreed medium and long-term measures to prevent a recurrence of a future gas supply crisis resembling this month’s row between Russia and the Ukraine. Ministers said the EU would fund improved metering, promote administrative transparency in gas supply systems feeding into member states’ networks, improved gas interconnection infrastructure and creating a better early warning system.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE MAXIMUM amount of duty-free or duty-paid tobacco that can be brought into the European Union (EU) from a non-EU country without paying EU excise duty can now be reduced to just 40 cigarettes. That is an option now offered to member states, which can maintain the previous 200 cigarette limit if they choose.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AS 2009 dawns, the European Union’s (EU) renewable energy sector knows that it has truly entered the mainstream of EU utility markets, its growth being sanctioned by ambitious legislation approved before Christmas.

After more than a year of debates, the European Parliament and EU ministers have approved a new EU directive imposing mandatory national targets for the 27 member states regarding the portion of their gross final consumption of energy in 2020 coming from renewable sources.…

BY MARK ROWE

THE CREDIT crunch may be about to apply the handbrake to the Russian economy, but its paint industry continued to flourish in 2008, mirroring the expansion of wealth in the country, and suggesting the sector may buck the expected downturn in the coming 12 months.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

DESPITE widespread scepticism about its viability, the ITER project to build the world’s first commercial nuclear fusion reactor is now under way. It is employing specialists (nearly 300 staff and rising at the end of 2008); releasing Euro millions in research and procurement funding; and in November moved into its headquarters, in Cadarache, southern France, which is where the first nuclear fusion reactor will be built on a 180 hectare site.…