Search Results for: Thai

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A WORLD Trade Organisation (WTO) disputes panel has told the USA that it should reform its assessment of anti-dumping duties on Thai exports to America of Polyethylene retail carrier bags. Concluding that the USA had "acted inconsistently with [the WTO’s] Anti-Dumping Agreement" by rounding down valuations of Thai exports or ‘zeroing’.…

BY WILLIAM BARNES

IN Southeast Asia confectionery is important, perhaps deceptively so.

"No Asiatic regime practices the art of confectionery," opined Richard Sterling in his robust book, "The Fearless Diner."

Sterling may have been to too many Chinese-style banquets, where an abrupt finish is common.…

BY WILLIAM BARNES

IN the good old days in south-east Asia, a market stallholder might hope to capture the neighbourhood cosmetics market with a simple range of soap, talc, lipstick (usually red) and cheap perfume.

The typical female routine was clean yourself, calm and whiten the face with talc, then add a dash of lipstick.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) Council of Ministers has slashed antidumping duties on three Chinese suppliers to the EU market of plastic bags and sacks. Ministers have agreed that exports from Huiyang Kanlun Polyethylene Manufacture Factory, of Huizhou; Bao Xiang Plastic Bag Manufacturing (Shenzhen) Co Ltd, of Shenzhen; and Quanzhou Polywin Packaging Co Ltd, of Nanan, should attract antidumping duties of 8.4 % rather than the standard rate of 28.8%.…

BY MARK ROWE

DESPITE the worldwide economic gloom (and the country’s own political woes), Thailand’s paint industry appeared vibrant right up to and including the final quarter of 2008, with a raft of expansion plans, significant investment and takeovers in an active market.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank will invest up to US$25 million to finance oil and gas exploration in Thailand and Laos by London-based Salamander Energy. The IFC will acquire minority interests in a Laos Savannakhet production-sharing contract and northeast Thailand concessions.…

BY PHILIPPA JONES, DOMINIQUE PATTON and LUCY JONES

The growth in outsourcing within the clothing and textile sector worldwide has highlighted a key issue, and that is the relative merits of running an integrated company that handles basic production and design, or relying on a string of specialist suppliers to deliver the goods, from fibre supplies, to textile manufacture, design, clothing assembly and retail.…

BY WILLIAM BARNES

A WOMAN brushes past palm fronds into the pastel lights of a busy Bangkok salon. At the counter she turns what looks to be a flawless, ivory face towards a woman in a vaguely medical uniform: "Aiyee! I am getting so old.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A MAN-MADE ecological disaster that almost destroyed a fishing industry is now being reversed. The northern Aral Sea – once a shallow saline remnant – is now growing again, boosting fish production. Excess irrigation shrank central Asia’s Aral Sea by 70% from 1960 to 2004, and its level dropped about 20 metres, splitting it in two in 1990: a small Northern Aral Sea entirely within Kazakhstan and a large Southern Aral Sea, shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THAILAND has made a significant step forward towards helping the UN Environment Programme achieve its goal of planting one tree for every person on earth (around seven billion) by 2009, launching its own national ‘Plant for the Planet, Plant for the Future’ campaign.…