Search Results for: Germany

BY WANG FANGQING

THE RASH of strikes that have hit China’s auto sector are certainly insufficient to persuade manufacturers to scale back their expansion plans, but the long term lessons are clear: China is no longer a bargain basement labor market of placid easily-pleased workers.…

BY KARRYN MILLER

AS trade barriers continue to diminish, clothing brands are becoming more global. However it is not as easy for the sizes of their goods to be quite as worldly. International players need to adapt their fits for different target markets but that level of adaptation varies by country.…

BY JULIAN RYALL

WITHOUT looking, Ryoichi Komaki, 57, reaches out and unerringly selects one out of hundreds of small, glass bottles that are arrayed on shelves around his desk. He unscrews the cap and dips an absorbent strip in the liquid.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE LATEST major food product promotion programme financed by the European Union (EU) is focusing heavily on healthy foodstuffs – with organic, fruit and vegetable products getting the lion’s share. The European Commission has approved 19 one-to-three year publicity programmes in 14 member states (Austria, Belgium, Britain, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Spain) which will promote sales in the EU.…

BY MARK GODFREY

EVEN as the Burmese government embarks on construction of an airport in its middle-of-nowhere capital Naypyidaw, traffic remains underwhelming at the county’s main international hub in Rangoon, officially known as Yangon.

Officially opened in May 2007, Yangon International Airport has so far struggled to justify its ambitious capacity of 2.7 million passengers per year set by Burma’s (official name Myanmar) Department of Transportation, which oversees the country’s airports.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has fined 17 producers of prestressing steel Euro 518 million for operating a cartel that lasted 18 years until 2002 and covered all but three of the then 15 European Union (EU) member states – Britain, Ireland and Greece.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A NEW European Union (EU) body coordinating around Euro EUR1 billion in food-related research from 20 European countries has started work. The ‘scientific advisory board for the EU joint programming initiative (JPI) on agriculture, food security and climate change’ will plan and manage national food industry research securing future supplies and reducing climate emissions.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD, ALAN OSBORN and KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN automakers will be looking to boost exports to the Mercosur countries of South America, if they strike a trade deal with the European Union (EU). A resumption of negotiations on slashing tariffs for goods traded between the EU’s 27 member countries and the four-country Mercosur block, (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay), has been announced by the European Commission, the EU’s executive.…

BY JULIAN RYALL

FOURTEEN years and five months after it was shut down in the wake of an accident, Japan’s Monju fast-breeder reactor resumed operations today (Thursday May 6).

After receiving final confirmation from the local and national governments that the controversial plant could be restarted, control rods were removed from the reactor, a process that was completed at 10.36 am Japan time, according to the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice (ECJ) has confirmed Euro EUR23.44 million in European Commission fines on five companies participating in an industrial thread cartel. Within this, judges reduced Belgian Sewing Thread’s fine from EUR980,000 to EUR856,800 because of cooperation in the cartel investigation sparking the original fines.…