Search Results for: Research

EASTERN and central Europen markets for biocosmetics are a key growth area for personal care product companies, with some markets growing and others relatively untapped.

The region’s largest country, Poland (38 million people) is witnessing sales of bio-cosmetics surging at rates of 10% to 30% annually, according to producers and distributors.…

THE EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has concluded that the sweetener aspartame is safe for human consumption at current recommended levels of consumption. Following a review of evidence provided both by animal and human studies, EFSA experts have ruled out a potential risk of aspartame causing damage to genes and inducing cancer for most consumers.…

With their combined population of just under 9 million, the south Pacific island territories, excluding New Zealand, are a set of small and hard to reach markets – so it is maybe no surprise that only a handful of companies tap their paint and coatings demand.…

BY LEE ADENDORFF

THE USE of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags in the food and drink sector might have grown exponentially in the past 10 years, but the technology is likely to become even more ubiquitous worldwide. UK-based retailers and pioneers in the use of the technology Marks & Spencer and Tesco can now chalk up a decade of experience in the use of RFID, from distribution centre (DC) operations right through to retail floor item-level tagging.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has provisionally recommended that exposure levels to consumers from the plastic packaging chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) be lowered sharply. This follows a review of more than 450 studies, which identified “likely” damage to consumers’ livers, kidneys and potential harm to mammary glands “linked to exposure to the chemical.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) telecoms sector will be able to tap significant research funds from the EU’s new Euro EUR80 billion Horizon 2020 research programme, which began on New Year’s Day and will run until 2020. The European Commission has already made its first formal call for research proposals, which are generally made of consortia with companies working with universities and research groups from different countries.…

BY ROBERT STOKES

AS businesses and consumers increasingly adopt a ‘digital lifestyle’ using mobile platforms such as tablets and smartphones, communication services providers (CSPs) are asking how best to monetise services while lowering costs. CSPs want to maximise yield per customer and reduce the churn for users consuming a range of data, voice and SMS text services.…

BY JENS KASTNER, in Taipei

THE TAIWAN textile dyeing and finishing sectors have never quite recovered from the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) abolition of global textile quotas in 2005. It resulted in the closure of many stand-alone units by making their labour-intensive manufacturing processes on the relatively wealthy island uncompetitive.…

BY LEE ADENDORFF

A country famed for its beautiful traditional ‘batik,’ Malaysia is also home to a highly specialised textiles industry and these niche skills may prove vital for the country’s numerous finishing factories in what is shaping up to a challenging year.…

BY MARK ROWE; JONATHAN DYSON, in Zagreb; and ANDREW KURETH, in Warsaw

THE COUNTRIES of eastern and central Europe that came in from the cold in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall have felt the economic chill in recent years, with recession affecting the fortunes of the cosmetics industry.…