Search Results for: Russia

BY MARK ROWE
IKEA’s store in the Russian city of St. Petersburg will undergo an environmental audit to avert the threat of closure by the country’s Natural Resources Ministry. Facing the unlikely scenario of the Swedish furniture giant having to close a branch by breaking Russian environmental laws, IKEA has hired a firm to conduct the audit to comply with state regulations.…

BY MARK ROWE
RUSSIA is lifting export duties on unalloyed aluminium and primary aluminium alloys. The export duty on raw aluminium will amount to 5 per cent, while unalloyed aluminium and primary aluminium alloys will be exported duty free, according to a statement issued by the Russian government’s information department.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is teaming up with Japanese-owned Sumitec International to create a US$45 million facility, providing lease financing for Russian companies expanding or modernising their mining equipment. The scheme will especially focus on Siberia and other far-east regions of Russia, which – said a bank memorandum – “are currently under-serviced by the leasing industry.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SUPPORT has been secured within the European Parliament for a proposed increase in the borrowing ceiling for the European Union’s (EU) nuclear energy arm Euratom, raising it from the current Euro 400 million to 600 million. The approval did not come without strings however, with MEP’s calling for Euratom to be restricted in its spending of this money to projects improving safety, decommissioning plants or establishing storage and disposal facilities for radioactive waste and spent fuel.…

BY MARK ROWE
RUSSIA’S Urals Mining and Metals Company (UGMK) has bought the nation’s second largest zinc smelter, Elektrotsink. UGMK, which is headed by entrepreneur Iskander Makhmudov, said it intends to invest in production at the zinc smelter factory and produce up to 85,000 metric tons of zinc at Electrotsink this year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is investigating a proposed deal effectively allying the European Union’s (EU) two companies enriching uranium for the nuclear industry. Brussels fears the purchase by France’s Areva of a 50 per cent stake in the Enrichment Technology Company from German-Dutch-British Urenco could cut competition and raise nuclear fuel prices, given enrichment represents about 35 per cent of fuel production costs and seven per cent for nuclear electricity generally.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL and MARK ROWE
THE STANDING Committee for the Food Chain and Animal Health of the European Union (EU) has extended until August 15 the suspension of EU imports of fresh chicken meat and chicken products from Thailand because of the bird flu outbreak.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) ministers have been asked by the European Commission to impose definitive anti-dumping duties of 23.6 per cent on imports from Russia of imports of silicon (with silicon content less than 99.99 per cent by weight).…

BY MARK ROWE
THE LARGEST museum in the world and – arguably – the grandest of them all, the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg is returning to its roots. In the middle of a long and painstaking modernisation process, the Russian museum is striving, in addition to the urgent physical restoration required to bring the museum into the 21st century, to recapture the ambience of its Imperial origins, when its vast palaces were the residence of the Tsars.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE European Environment Agency reports that under current policies the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2010 will be only 0.5 per cent below the 1990 target instead of the Kyoto target of 8 per cent. Sweden and the UK will do better than planned, but several will miss their targets by more than 20 per cent.…