Search Results for: Spanish

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EUROPEAN Union (EU)-funded research project that has used nanotechnology to help fix chrome finishes onto plastic materials to make auto parts look classy, while reducing vehicle weight, has been hailed as a success. The EU executive the European Commission has released a report on the benefits of the Ecsam project, which is being followed up with studies into other ways of attaching metallic finishes to plastics.…

BY ROBERT STOKES, IN MALAGA

The Spanish language Kindle was the bestselling product on the recently launched Amazon.es website throughout the holidays culminating on January 6, the main day for gift giving in Spain. Customers ordered more EUROS EUR 99 Kindles than any other product on its site, Amazon said.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

OLIVE oil growers in the European Union (EU) are currently facing an increasingly frustrating situation: while demand is growing internationally and harvests have been unusually good in recent years, prices are falling at a rapid rate, threatening the livelihood of the thousands of farmers in the main growing countries.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE, IN BEIRUT

THE SYRIAN economy is in bad shape: sanctions have been slapped on the country by the United States and the European Union (EU), and the uprisings that began in March last year continue unabated. But while one of Syria’s main revenue earners – fossil fuel oil – has been affected by instability and international sanctions, its olive oil sector has had its best year ever harvest, estimated at 200,000 tonnes.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

WINNERS

VF

In one of 2011’s biggest deals, US-based VF announced its plans to buy major footwear brand Timberland in a US$2bn takeover. As well as boosting earnings by US$700m a year, the purchase would leverage VF platforms in Europe, Asia and Latin America, and boost e-commerce operations.…

BY MJ DESCHAMPS

FROM fabrics that moisturise and kill bacteria to bizarre weather and media scandals, the global style sector in 2011 certainly had its share of unusual news and unpredictable developments.

The year started off with the backlash of December’s massive snowstorms disrupting post-Christmas shopping along the northern east coast in the US, causing an abrupt halt to a two-month spending spree which began at the beginning of November 2010.…

BY NADJA DROST

AMIDST a global gold rush spurred on by historically high prices, Colombia, with vast tracts of unexplored gold deposits, is emerging as a major source of the precious metal.

But Colombia’s gold boom is providing the country’s numerous illegal armed groups with sundry new ways to finance their wars as well as launder their ill-gotten profits.…

BY ROBERT STOKES

The Commission action was welcomed in Spain by the Federación de Gremios de Editores de España (FGEE), the Spanish publishers association: "In whatever case, we would like the Commission to investigate positions of market dominance and abuses by certain operators," said Antonio María Ávila, FGEE’s executive director.…

BY PETER DA COSTA

The European fashion industry’s big names have been told by European Union (EU) industry Commissioner Antonio Tajani that their design and craftsmanship would enable the sector to hold its own in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. Speaking at a lunch in Brussels yesterday, attended by just-style, Tajani said European fashion design needed to be guided by demanding tastes of Europe’s customers at home rather than the demands of retailers abroad, and quality would surely follow: "European fashion is for consumers, not only companies", he said.…

BY MARK GODFREY

THE iPhone 4 and pricey bottles of Bordeaux appear to have become unlikely but essential business tools to crack the China market. "We have staff flying to Hong Kong to get them as soon as they hit the Apple Stores there," explains a European dealmaker who links state-owned Chinese energy firms with Western suppliers of turbines and high-tech tooling machines for the energy sector.…