Alba reinvesting for strategic development
Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) has re-invested $1 billion to finance strategic development schemes and boost steady growth in production, Finance Minister Shaikh Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa said.
Dismissing the reports over controversy surrounding Alba revenues, he said a large chunk of profits was re-invested in development schemes, hence the steady growth in production generated by the fifth smelter.
“This should be clear as Bahrain financial dealings are annually appraised by world financial institutions, particularly the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund,” he said. The smelter’s production capacity is now around 850,000 tonnes per year
VC Bank to open soon
The $500-million Venture Capital Bank (VCBank), the first Islamic investment bank in the Arab region, will open its doors for business soon. The bank has a paid-up capital of $50 million out of which founding shareholders will cover 50 per cent or $25 million. It aims to tap the huge investment potential for the company including the funding of small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) across the Arab region.
Among VCBank’s investors are parties from the UK and the US. The Saudi Suliman Group is a strategic partner.
Contract awarded
Drake & Scull International, the world-renowned mechanical and electrical engineering contractors, has been awarded a Dh20-million contract for a project at the Smart Village in Egypt.
The Smart Village, a 300-acre technological park coming up near the Cairo International Airport, will offer state-of-the-art infrastructure geared towards high-tech businesses and aimed at creating a strategic base to enable IT and telecommunications businesses to gain the competitive advantage.
Steel mill coming up
Japanese trading house Marubeni said it had clinched a $185-million project with German and Japanese partners to build a steel mill of capacity 5.3 million tonnes per year in Turkey. A Marubeni spokesman said the company signed the deal with Iskenderun Iron-Steel Factories on behalf of Siemens AG and Mitsubishi-Hitachi Metals Machinery.
Posco in $12bn India plant
Posco, the world’s fifth-largest steel maker, has signed a deal for a $12-billion Indian steel project, the biggest foreign direct investment in India. Under the agreement, $3 billion will be invested initially between 2007 to 2010 to build a 3-million-tonne plant, which will start production from 2010, Posco said.
The project, involves building a 12-million-tonne steel plant, a 30-million-tonne iron ore mine, a mill for making hot-rolled coil and a seaport. The government of India’s Orissa state also granted Posco mining lease rights for 30 years to supply a total of 6 million tonnes of iron ore to the new plant, the firm said.
Tuvalu bans plastic bags
The tiny archipelago state of Tuvalu in the Pacific has become the world’s first country free of plastic shopping bags after the 11,000 inhabitants replaced all plastic bags with textile ones.
The main importer of plastic bags, Tuvalu Cooperative Society, publicly confirmed it would stop the imports. Non-governmental organisation International Help Fund (HI) supplied all the residents over 12 years of age with cloth bags and schoolchildren then distributed them personally from door to door.
New Toyota plant in India
Toyota Motor and its subsidiary Daihatsu Motor will build a new car plant in India with an investment of more than $100 million. The plant will make small cars near an existing factory run by a Toyota joint venture in the southern IT hub of Bangalore, a report in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.
The plant will be built as early as 2007 with initial production of 100,000 cars a year.
Eco-friendly charger
UK firm Better Energy Solutions has developed an eco-friendly battery charger which uses solar power to energise iPods, mobile phones and other devices.
At 5.8 ounces, the Solio line of battery chargers is designed to be as portable as the devices to which they provide power. Both the iPod and mobile-phone chargers feature a fan-blade design open to capture the sun’s rays and charge their internal batteries. When there is no sunlight, the Solio can be plugged into its wall charger.
The mobile-phone charger uses an adapter system to work with an array of mobile devices, while the iPod charger ships with an iPod connector kit.
