The News Review:
- Old footwear plant kickstarts a renaissance
- Businessman chooses new career to stay here
- Safety fears sidelined in Japan’s new energy dawn
- PLN signs $888m power contracts with Chinese firms
- Gulf Times ‘” Qatar’s top-selling English daily newspaper – Finance…
Old footwear plant kickstarts a renaissance
Toronto Star – Apr 26, 2008
"I did look at other areas such as downtown Toronto and Mississauga but found my dollar went further in Kitchener-Waterloo and I knew my return on investment was quite secure based on how this region is growing" Sowa says. The Kaufman building is symbolic of a downtown renaissance. Sowa’s building was once the Kaufman Footwear plant which opened in Kitchener (then Berlin) in 1908 and manufactured Sorel boots. Recipient of a number of awards for the remediation and reconstruction that went into its birth Kaufman Lofts is the first major residential conversion of downtown Kitchener’s large inventory of long-closed industrial buildings. Andrin Homes a Brampton-based firm is the developer of the project in partnership with Kimshaw Holdings a Mississauga company that specializes in brownfield site remediation. Other loft conversions are also underway or planned as the downtown goes through its second major transformation in about 25 years says Terry Boutilier Kitchener’s senior business development officer and brownfield co-ordinator. Among them is the old Arrow shirt factory which like Kaufman sat vacant after the industry moved on… "We’ve have a number of software firms located here as well as architectural environmental marketing and legal firms. " Also over a three-year period of staged renovations the old Centre Mall was transformed into a Manulife Financial office building. In 2001 a developer acquired Market Square renovated and transformed it into a facility now housing a fitness club a consulting engineering firm and the The Waterloo Region Record newspaper formerly the Kitchener-Waterloo Record. In tandem with those private initiatives was a city decision to capitalize on its industrial heritage and status as a centre for post-secondary learning. The Kitchener-Waterloo area is home to the University of Waterloo Wilfrid Laurier University and Conestoga College (while the University of Guelph lies only 35 kilometres to the east of U of W). "We decided to aggressively bring those facilities downtown" says Boutilier citing the creation of an Economic Development Investment Fund which will allocate $110 million for special projects over the next 10 years. With that fund in hand Kitchener partnered with Wilfrid Laurier University to save and convert the old St.
Businessman chooses new career to stay here
mlive.com – Apr 26, 2008
Pauwels now is a consultant for Advisa based in Indianapolis. Born and raised in Belgium Chris Pauwels is a former South African industrial manager who has lived and worked on many continents. But when his Bekaert Corp. wire plant in Muskegon closed in 2007 Pauwels and his family had seen enough of the world. They had fallen in love with Muskegon and wanted to stay. Bekaert’s Muskegon operations provided wire products mainly to a struggling automotive industry but the company offered Pauwels an opportunity to continue his career with the Belgium company in Brazil China India or Russia. He talked to his family and said no… “Being by the lakeshore our community has advantages not found in other places. Settling down in a place called Muskegon would have been the last thought on Pauwels’ mind as he launched his industrial career in the early 1980s. Born near Brussels Pauwels went to Catholic schools and graduated from the Catholic University of Leuven with a degree in engineering and metallurgy. In 1982 there were few jobs in Belgium but industry was humming in South Africa. A recruiter got Pauwels to take a job for ISCOR the country’s leading steel company located in Vanderbijlpark 40 miles south of Johannesburg. After two years he moved to Consolidated Wire Industries Ltd. in the same city a company where he stayed for 12 years.
Safety fears sidelined in Japan’s new energy dawn
The Age – Apr 26, 2008
7 trillion yen Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant which canrecycle up to 800 tonnes of nuclear waste a year for reuse willlaunch the pacifist nation into a new era of nuclear power when itcommences operations in July. Trade Minister Akira Amari has hailed it as “the future” ofsustainable energy for Japan which has virtually no naturalresources and takes a third of its energy from 55 nuclear powerplants. At a press conference last weekend French Prime MinisterFrancois Fillon whose country contributed technology to theproject proudly declared: “Step by step by respecting all thesecurity rules we would like to bring developing nations towardmastery of these technologies. But as Tokyo was celebrating a growing band of critics fearedthe worst. Some have accused plant builder Japan Nuclear Fuel ofgrossly under-playing the likely extent of radioactive emissionswhich two scientists have independently forecast could causehundreds of cases of terminal cancer each year… “There will be sufficient dispersion and dilution so that theyearly exposure to radiation for the public will be just oneone-hundredth what people are ordinarily exposed to in the naturalenvironment” a spokesman for the company told The Age. “Andby reusing spent fuel rather than disposing of it we’re savingresources in a safe way. ” Some in the scientific community such asHaruki Madarame a professor in nuclear-safety engineering at TokyoUniversity vouch for the claim. Others are not convinced. Hiroaki Koide an assistant professorat Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute points out thatbecause the quantity of liquid contaminants flushed into the oceanwill be so great Japan Nuclear Fuel has been allowed to bypassordinary rules for regulating radioactivity levels in matter beforerelease. Instead he says it has used an ad hoc equation made upof assumptions and manipulated figures about the rate of dispersionof radioactive materials in water to guess at the effect onhumans. His own calculations on the other hand show that “thekrypton-85 the Rokkasho reprocessing plant will release each yearwill contaminate the whole world and.
PLN signs $888m power contracts with Chinese firms
Jakarta Post – Apr 26, 2008
php”); }); Be a member & get the benefits! Register or login. PLN signed the EPC contract for the 700-megawatt (MW) Tanjung Awar-awar power plant in East Java with a consortium of China National Machinery Equipment Corp. (Sinomac) China National Electric Equipment Corp. (CNEEC) and a local company PT Penta Adi Samudra with the contract estimated to be worth $642 million. PLN signed another contract worth $247… 4 million for the 200-MW Nagan Raya plant in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam with another Chinese company Sinohydro Corp. PLN president director Fahmi Mochtar said the projects were expected to be completed within 2 years with the first unit of the plant starting commercial operation in October 2010 followed by the second one in January 2011. Both plants are part of the government’s 10000-MW power plant project initially scheduled for completion by the end of next year but the deadline is likely to be extended due to financial problems. The program will see PLN build 10 coal-fired power plants with a total capacity of 6900 MW in Java and 25 power plants with a total capacity outside Java. The program is targeted for completion by 2010. The program is aimed at raising the country’s electricity provision which currently stands at 56 percent. This means 45 percent of Indonesia’s population still lives in the dark.
Gulf Times ‘” Qatar’s top-selling English daily newspaper – Finance…
Gulf Times – Apr 26, 2008
The Mesaieed plant will focus on producing aluminium casthouse materials such as extrusion ingots and primary foundry alloys said chief executive officer Truls Gautesen and deputy CEO Hassan al-Rashid. The facilities will include a 1325MW gas-fired captive power plant a modern casthouse carbon plant and a new port for unloading raw materials. QP will provide gas to Qatalum to operate the captive power plant whose generation will be about 35% of Qatar?s current power production and 10% of that of Norway. High-quality extrusion ingots and foundry alloys will be exported from the project. Gautesen and al-Rashid said Qatalum was coming up in over 2sq km of area at Mesaieed… High-quality extrusion ingots and foundry alloys will be exported from the project. Gautesen and al-Rashid said Qatalum was coming up in over 2sq km of area at Mesaieed. Value-added products such as extrusion ingots and primary foundry alloys will have extensive application in building and construction transport general engineering and household durables worldwide. Gautesan said ?Aluminium?s unique properties give the metal a competitive edge in the main end-user areas of application. The recyclability and quality of the metal in a life-cycle perspective help create a strong basis for growth. Aluminium is increasingly being used in emerging economies. All these factors enhance the prospects for increased aluminium demand.