Archive for July, 2012
Drax meets interim profit expectations
Drax Group, the operator of Britain’s largest coal-fired power station, insisted it was well placed to deal with tougher technical conditions imposed on government subsidies for renewable energy supplies as it met expectations on interim profits.
Disappointment over a change in UK policy over qualification for subsidies available to Drax for burning biomass – renewable fuels such as forestry and agricultural waste – alongside coal at its power plants prompted shares in the company to fall by a quarter last Wednesday.
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But Dorothy Thompson, Drax chief executive, insisted on Tuesday that testing on work to transform three of its six main power plant boilers to meet the new government threshold were encouraging. To receive a full subsidy, the government is demanding that each individual power station boiler have a 90 per cent threshold of biomass use.
Prior to that decision, the market had been hoping that Drax would qualify for the full subsidy if it converted its boilers to burn 50 to 60 per cent biomass.
According to Ms Thompson, last week there was “really a change of direction by government, and investors have found it hard to understand that we have had a good strategy on that.
“During recent combustion trials we successfully operated a single unit on a fully converted basis for a sustained period,” she said, insisting that Drax was now confident that it could “deliver reliable and flexible renewable power through converted units at attractive rates of efficiency and output”.
The company, which ended the six months to June 30 with £223m of net cash, said it was now confident it could push ahead with investments of up to £700m required to enhance biomass-based combustion capacity over the next five years that would preserve its share of UK power generation.
In the period from January to May, it operated at a load factor of 82 per cent compared with an average of 55 per cent and 28 per cent for other UK coal and gas-powered plants.
Interim revenues edged ahead from £866m to £868m as pre-tax profits, trimmed by higher transmission cost and retail, fell in line with expectations from £169m to £141m.
A reduced interim dividend of 14.4p, down from 16p, is payable from earnings per share of 33p, down from the 91p interim dividend generated by Drax last year following receipt of an exceptional £150m tax credit.
Shares rose 1 per cent to 475.3p, recovering some ground after the fall from 517p to a low of 390p last Wednesday.
Brokers at Deutsche Bank maintained a “buy” recommendation, arguing that “we continue to view the markets’ reaction since the government released its proposals last week as too negative”.
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Avery Dennison unveils ‘paper-like’ wine label film
Avery Dennison has launched a film label material in Europe to address the challenges faced by wine and spirit producers who need a premium brand image to survive intact during long periods of ice bucket immersion. Avery Dennison Aqua Proof offers the look and feel of a conventional premium paper label, with the improved performance of a film.
The new product, offered by Avery Dennison Label and Packaging Materials – Europe, delivers ‘unique’ levels of resistance to ice and water, eliminating wrinkles, pleats or bubbling when bottles are taken out of either cooling cabinets or ice water, says the company. Avery Dennison Aqua Proof combines Fasson S2047N adhesive with a tactile, pearlescent, embossable film – a film that has the appearance and ‘touch’ of a textured paper product.
Converters see the material as an important new option for raising their customers’ perception of product value. According to Alfredo Pollici, CEO of Notarianni in Valle S. Bartolomeo, Italy, ‘Our brands require material that remains unchanged through the whole bottle life cycle, even during tough challenges like the refrigerator or ice-bucket. Combining the elegance of paper with the durability of film gives us the best of both worlds. Our tests spanning several printing techniques have been universally well-received – many of our customers commented that this was a “nice paper”, without realizing initially that they were looking at a film.’
Brand owners for premium products such as champagne, wines, cava, prosecco and spirits have traditionally used uncoated papers and wet-glue labeling because paper offers a feeling of ‘authenticity’ to consumers. However, the open-weave nature of paper fibers enables moisture absorption which can cause the labels to develop wrinkles, pleats and bubbling. Changes in label opacity and label slippage during immersion are also significant problems.
Not only does Avery Dennison Aqua Proof solve these issues, but it is also resistant to label tearing during transport. Printed information remains intact after immersion in ice overnight, and also during lengthy storage in dark, humid conditions, because the film is naturally resistant to mold.
Francis Arnaud, business development manager at Avery Dennison Label and Packaging Materials – Europe, says that Avery Dennison Aqua Proof has been designed to simplify the choice of product for converters as well as improve ice water performance: ‘A wide range of decorative techniques can be used with this new material. Its paper-like look and feel helps converters reduce stock inventory because it suits a range of different bottles including sparkling wine, still white and rosé wines and spirits. Testing has taken place at several specialist converters in different countries using flexo, offset, hotfoil, silk screen and embossing. The results confirm that no tool adaptation is needed.’
The product will initially be offered in Europe and then expanded to other regions.
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RFID-enabled Lockers Help U.K. Organizations Manage Electronic Equipment
Britain’s Highways Agency, police departments and schools are using Traka’s lockers to monitor the storage of radios and other devices, as well as those who use that equipment, and when.
July 30, 2012—More than 100 Highways Agency offices within the United Kingdom are managing the use of the organization’s radios by means of a radio frequency identification solution that records when each radio is placed into or removed from a secured locker, and by whom. The technology was developed by Traka, a division of ASSA Abloy.
Traka, based in England, has provided electronic key-management solutions since 1990. At the heart of the key-management systems is the company’s Traka iFob, a bullet-shaped device containing a passive RFID tag encoded with a unique ID number. Keys are permanently attached to an iFob via a security seal, with each iFob assigned a particular location within a Traka key cabinet, and locked in place until released by an authorized user.
More recently, Traka developed its RFID-based solution to track assets entering and leaving lockers, initially intended for use by police departments. Since then, the RFID-enabled lockers have remained in use for several years, not only by the Highways Agency—which is responsible for operating, maintaining and improving England’s primary road network, as well as U.K. police departments—but also in schools.
The company had previously provided a variety of products and solutions related to the access control of keys or other items using biometrics, PIN codes or magnetic ID cards to ensure that only authorized personal can access a locker, and thus any assets stored within it. The addition of RFID technology, however, provides a greater degree of visibility, since users could determine whether an asset is actually in a specific locker, based on information culled by an RFID interrogator built into the locker, as well as a 125 kHz passive RFID tag, compliant with the ISO 11784 and ISO 11785 standards, attached to the asset stored at that location. The system’s software can also determine who has a particular item, based on which personnel accessed the locker at the time of its removal, according to John Kent, Traka’s president and founder.
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Nuclear ‘hard to justify’, says GE chief
Nuclear power is so expensive compared with other forms of energy that it has become “really hard” to justify, according to the chief executive of General Electric, one of the world’s largest suppliers of atomic equipment.
“It’s really a gas and wind world today,” said Jeff Immelt, referring to two sources of electricity he said most countries are shifting towards as natural gas becomes “permanently cheap”.
“When I talk to the guys who run the oil companies they say look, they’re finding more gas all the time. It’s just hard to justify nuclear, really hard. Gas is so cheap and at some point, really, economics rule,” Mr Immelt told the Financial Times in an interview in London at the weekend. “So I think some combination of gas, and either wind or solar … that’s where we see most countries around the world going.”
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Mr Immelt’s comments underline the impact on the global energy landscape of the US shale gas revolution, Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown and falling prices for some types of renewable power.
The shale boom has sent US natural gas prices down to 10-year lows, a trend some analysts believe will spread elsewhere, while the nuclear industry faces added costs and uncertainty after Fukushima.
At the same time, a 75 per cent fall in solar panel market prices in the past three years has made solar power competitive with daytime retail electricity prices in some countries, according to a recent report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, while offshore wind turbine prices have steadily declined.
Such factors pose dilemmas for countries such as the UK, which is trying to build new nuclear plants without public subsidy. The ruling coalition is also split over whether to set a new target to make the electricity sector virtually free of carbon emissions by 2030 – a plan George Osborne, the Conservative finance minister, opposes but many Liberal Democrats back.
Mr Immelt lent weight to the Lib Dem argument, saying GE had found existing EU carbon targets helpful. “I think standards sometimes really drive innovation,” he said. “To a certain extent at least, knowing what the rules are and being able to innovate against it is not a bad thing.”
Mr Immelt played down the impact of changing energy trends on a company as large as GE, which reported annual profits of $13bn for 2011 (on revenues of $142bn) and sells products for every leading source of energy, from gas and wind turbines nuclear reactors and oil drilling gear, to gas and wind turbines.
“We’ve got them all, so in some ways when you have them all you don’t have to be so smart about anything,” he said.
Analysts estimate GE’s nuclear revenues, from a joint venture with Japan’s Hitachi, at an estimated $1bn, or less than 1 per cent of annual global sales.
Mr Immelt is visiting London during the Olympic Games, which GE sponsors.
The company will announce on Monday that it has made more than $1bn in sales from Olympic host cities since 2006, including $100m from the London games, where GE has sold several power systems, 120 electric vehicle charging stations and thousands of lights.
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Creed launches new flexographic range in India
Creed Engineers has tied-up with Italy-based Lombardi Converting Machinery, manufacturer of fully servo driven flexographic presses to launch an extensive range of flexographic presses and converting machines in India.
The association is said to represent a pooling of expertise of two industry players in an effort to present a superior range of flexographic and converting machines in India.
Creed Engineers has initially introduced two models in the Indian market; Lombardi Synchroline and Lombardi Screenline. Lombardi Synchroline enables the printer to print on a very large gamma of different materials; from adhesive paper to extensible materials needed for packaging industry, and Lombardi Screenline is a modular machine for the production of silk-screen printed labels.
Neeraj Sharma, general manager, machine sales, Creed Engineers said, ‘Printers today seek the possibility of printing on extensible materials needed for packaging industry. The problems relative to the maintenance of the printing register in these cases are well known by the printers. So here the servo driven technology becomes crucial which Lombardi is offering. Also, there is a clear benefit being derived out of the synergy of association of Creed Engineers and Lombardi, which will have a value addition to our product portfolio to serve the Indian printing and packaging industry.’
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