Search Results for: japan

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 WANG FANGQING

JAPAN’S leading pickles maker, Saitama Profecture-based Pickles Corp is to invest around Japanese yen JPY200 million (US dollar USD2.2 million) this year to develop its private brand products for retailers. "Our products [including pickled cabbage and pickled cucumber] will be sold in convenient stores and supermarkets," a spokesman told just-food.com.…

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 WANG FANGQING,RAGHAVENDRA VERMA and PACIFICA GODDARD

Convenience stores are no longer the preserve of cash rich but tine poor consumers in developed markets. They are increasingly popular in emerging markets too. Foreign convenience store operators in China, for instance, are now moving beyond major metropolitan centres – where they have long been established – to smaller lower-tier cities.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has formally proposed that the European Union (EU) adopts the global technical standard for electric vehicles – as agreed in 1997 by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). Assuming the EU Council of Ministers and European Parliament agree, then EU countries will have the same rules for manufacturing electric cars – preventing national rules impeding the sale of cars from different member states.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

SOME say, as we grow old, we regress into our childhood – and certainly Japanese robot designers think so: Fujitsu is developing a teddy bear android as a nursing aid for old people’s homes. Japan, notoriously, is an ageing society, with 23% of the country’s 127 million population now aged 65 or more.…

BY GAVIN BLAIR,KARRYN MILLER,ALAN OSBORN and KEITH NUTHALL

EVERY country had its own take on convenience stores. These retail traditions tend to be rooted in local cultures, making a certain combination of goods acceptable in one country, but not another. Rural Ireland, for instance, with its sparse population, has traditionally supported a bewildering array of convenience store offerings, mixing for retail with hardware, post offices, tobacco, newspapers, car repairs and more – and sometimes all at once.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

WITH a vivid metallic facade of mirror-like copper plates and Hindi ‘Mudr?’ hand sculptures at the arrival lounge of the brand new terminal building, the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI) in New Delhi is acclaimed by its developers as "the gateway to modern India."…

BY EMMA JACKSON

PAINT companies looking for an edge may very well find themselves turning to robots, as the industry in the Asia-Pacific region increasingly embraces automation. Cost effective, efficient and consistent, robots are indeed replacing employees in paint manufacturing processes and applications of coatings to products such as cars and machinery.…

BY MINI ZACHARIAH

MTR Foods, one of the top five processed foods manufacturers in India, owned by Norwegian conglomerate Orkla, aims to double turnover to Indian Rupees INR5 billion (US dollars USD106 million) by 2012 by focusing on its core business of spices and masalas, instant mixes and vermicelli.…