Benefit to Rural and Agro Industries from SEZs
Delhi
March 18, 2015 Last Updated at 16:20 IST
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Benefit to Rural and Agro Industries from SEZs
Since Special Economic Zones (SEZs) Act, 2005 and Rules, 2006 were notified in June, 2005 and February, 2006 respectively, formal approvals have been granted for setting up of 9 SEZs for Agro and Food Processing sector, out of which, 8 SEZs have been notified. Presently 4 SEZs are exporting.
Thursday, March 19, 2015
BIR Non-Ferrous World Mirror January 2015
BIR Non-Ferrous World Mirror January 2015
January 28, 2015 by Editorial Staff
Recent metal price swings have resurrected concerns over whether export contracts will be honoured upon arrival. 'Many fear a repeat of 2008 when claims and re-pricing negotiations were a daily occurrence,' one expert has stated. However, the sharp drop in oil prices has provided the bulk of the business headlines during the early stages of 2015. And although many sectors have welcomed the resulting dip in their costs, this is no universal panacea.
In Norway, for example, oil investments are being put on hold while oil companies are seeing reduced margins and employee numbers. And oil's decline is said to have come 'at a terrible time' for Mexico because the country's government 'had pinned high hopes on greater revenues and employment from increased production' whereas now 'prospects have definitely changed'.
At least the latter country can point to 'robust' demand for secondary aluminium on the back of automotive industry growth, although scrap processors are continuing to struggle with below-average post-consumer volumes attributed to ‘slumping prices’ and ‘government over-regulation’.
And the automotive sector continues to be the 'shining light' in the USA, where Twitch and Zorba prices have softened but demand remains good. InJapan, seven consecutive months of negative growth in domestic car production have resulted in year-on-year decreases in aluminium alloy demand.
And in China, ADC12 aluminium alloy producers are said to be under pressure from softer domestic demand, lower primary aluminium ingot prices, the weaker Japanese Yen pushing up import costs and additional spot offers fromRussian producers. Meanwhile, in figures that will have global repercussions, the People’s Bank of China has projected that domestic GDP growth will fall from 7.4% in 2014 to 7.1% this year.
Another headline event in early 2015 will be the maiden financial budget of the government elected last year in India. The country's scrap-related businesses are hoping it will deliver some cheer, particularly as recent LME losses 'have taken the wind out of the sails of local smelters and processors'.
In particular, bodies including the Metal Recycling Association of India have asked the government to withdraw duties on scrap imports and to correct an inverted structure owing to India's Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN countries whereby incoming finished goods attract zero duty and yet raw materials are taxed. In South Africa, meanwhile, there are concerns that certain copper scrap dealers are obtaining export permits even though they are being offered a price above the International Trade Administration Commission (ITAC) threshold.
'More illegal exports are taking place as scrap dealers are using different tariff headings and exploiting loopholes in the system,' it is contended. Elsewhere, the weather has been a key factor in early-2015 trading levels. In the Middle East, heavy snow in some parts served to 'put some businesses on hold during the first week' whereas, contrastingly, lack of snow and warm weather have helped ensure the trading of relatively good volumes of non-ferrous scrap in Denmark and southern Sweden.
For metal merchants in Australia and New Zealand, consumers are buying but, as normal, volumes have been low in the first month of the year. Very few loads of scrap have changed hands in Italy following the holiday break while the scrap trade in France too has been 'waking up very slowly from the holiday season', with business attracting 'minimal margins'. For aluminium and copper scrap, demand is proving persistent for very high grade material - but at 'increasing discounts and decreasing margins' - whereas trading among the lower grades is deemed 'scarce'.
In Germany, meanwhile, the markets are characterised by 'weak prices, large-scale availability and fragile demand'. Notwithstanding LME fluctuations, ruble prices are rising as the currency in Russia continues to devalue. The country's winter has brought the traditional 'fight for scrap in terms of prices, payments and availability'.
For more information, visit: www.bir.org
Tomato Ketchup Heats Up with Sriracha
The almost 140-year old Heinz Tomato Ketchup brand is the highest-selling product of H.J. Heinz Co., with approximately 650 million bottles sold every year. A mainstay in most U.S. kitchens and restaurants, today’s evolving taste buds crave new flavors, which is why the brand is getting hot with Heinz Ketchup Blended with Sriracha Flavor.
This twist on the classic maintains the recognizable taste and consistency of “America’s Favorite Ketchup,” with a kick from spicy chili pepper and garlic flavors. The new variety joins the company’s other flavors, which are Tomato Ketchup Blended with Real Jalapeno, Tomato Ketchup Blended with Balsamic Vinegar and Hot & Spicy Ketchup Blended with Tabasco Brand Pepper Sauce. Adding the sriracha flavor makes sense, as according to NPD Group, sriracha sauce is currently found in 16 percent of U.S. households with a homemaker under age 35 and in 9 percent of total households. Now those consumers can get two of their favorite condiments in one. The new flavor comes in the familiar upside-down 14-oz. plastic squeeze bottle featuring a green and red label.
The suggested retail price is $2.69.
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Paper Info
Paper is a thin material produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets.
Paper is a versatile material with many uses. Whilst the most common is for writing and printing upon, it is also widely used as a packaging material, in many cleaning products, in a number of industrial and construction processes, and even as a food ingredient – particularly in Asian cultures.
Paper, and the pulp papermaking process, was said to be developed in China during the early 2nd century AD, possibly as early as the year 105 A.D.,[1] by the Han court eunuch Cai Lun, although the earliest archaeological fragments of paper derive from the 2nd century BC in China.[2]
The modern pulp and paper industry is global, with China leading production and the United States behind it.
Evolution and the alternative
Evolution and the alternative
Possibly a year ago, maybe more, I watched a discussion/argument on this site, between a creationist and a couple of atheists. Atheists, by default, are evolutionists. In the atheist philosophy, every natural creature is an accident, a product of mindless natural selection, somehow breaking the second law of thermodynamics and creating order from chaos, simply by dint of sunlight and oodles of time. Much like heating up a large nugget of copper ore with sunlight and slowly watching a beautiful, intricately detailed and polished vase appear - as time and chance make their effects felt, except that organic evolution is several hundred million times more complex.
The discussion was about design and the atheists had raised the tired argument about the human eye being an example of poor design, because the retina is in the “wrong” place. Already at that time, there was a paper discussing how brilliantly the eye adapted to low-light or colour, due to the placement of the rods and cones – but the studies were still too fresh to be widely known.
I was tempted to quote that paper and add my two cents, about how every claim from people professing to have superior ideas to creation, eventually have to swallow their own words. But I refrained – and now it seems that even the eye argument is being reluctantly allowed to go down the tubes, along with Haeckel’s faked embryos, the fortuitously appearing fragments of skull of Piltdown man, Darwin’s finches, fruit-fly mutations and the other embarrassments that evolution is tempted to use to prop up its ailing theory.
I recently came across an article about a paper to be presented at the American Physical Society on the fifth of March, this year. It includes the following interesting (a creationist might quip “inevitable”) statements. Note how difficult it is for the evolutionists to avoid reaffirming their religious dogma about it being evolution anyway:
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From a practical standpoint, the wiring of the human eye - a product of our evolutionary baggage - doesn't make a lot of sense. In vertebrates, photoreceptors are located behind the neurons in the back of the eye - resulting in light scattering by the nervous fibers and blurring of our vision. Recently, researchers at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology have confirmed the biological purpose for this seemingly counterintuitive setup.
"The retina is not just the simple detector and neural image processor, as believed until today," said Erez Ribak, a professor at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. "Its optical structure is optimized for our vision purposes." Ribak and his co-authors will describe their work during the 2015 American Physical Society March Meeting, on Thursday, March 5 in San Antonio, Texas.
Previous experiments with mice had suggested that Müller glia cells, a type of metabolic cell that crosses the retina, play an essential role in guiding and focusing light scattered throughout the retina. To test this, Ribak and his colleagues ran computer simulations and in-vitro experiments in a mouse model to determine whether colors would be concentrated in these metabolic cells. They then used confocal microscopy to produce three-dimensional views of the retinal tissue, and found that the cells were indeed concentrating light into the photoreceptors.
"For the first time, we've explained why the retina is built backwards, with the neurons in front of the photoreceptors, rather than behind them," Ribak said.
Wait for the evolutionists to claim a victory by saying “See!. This is how science works!”. Fine. Does that mean that you now admit that the eye could be optimally designed?
Hmmm. I didn’t think you would.
As for the next fallacy that evolutionists are going to have to finally divest of the dregs, is their still-firm insistence on claiming that the human body has some four or five vestigial organs. The appendix, the vestigial nictating membrane in the inner corner of the eye, the coccyx, male nipples, erector pili (goosebump muscles), oh, and wisdom teeth. That’s six (in fact, there are even more). They should feel relieved – there were once TWO HUNDRED organs and structures in the human body classified as vestigial. Imagine a determined evolutionist giving up his vestigial bits to prove his confidence!
Almost daily, new functionality is found for “vestigial” organs. Bioscientists have known for a long time that the appendix reboots the gut with bacteria if the intestine is flushed. They know that we can’t sit or stand properly without a coccyx, the – and so on. In fact, the experts are a lot less certain than their faithful supporters who are happy to preach evolution without making the effort to understand the science they pretend that “every scientist agrees with”. An interested reader can easily find out the critical or important functions for every one of the “vestigial” organs – but only if s/he is willing to make this slight effort.
Source : www.news24.com/MyNews24/Evolution-and-the-alternative-20150312
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Gina Rinehart risks all on Roy Hill iron ore mine
Gina Rinehart risks all on Roy Hill iron ore mine
As the world's richest woman, with a guaranteed annual
royalty income stretching into the stratosphere, Gina Rinehart could
have simply sat back and watched her fortune grow.
Instead, she
embarked on a hugely ambitious, high stakes gamble to become a major
iron ore producer, to fulfil her father's ambitions and cement her
reputation as a businessperson in her own right.But the timing couldn't have been worse. In the past year, her fortune has evaporated at a rate of about $15 million a day.
"In the 2014 rich list we valued her at about $20 billion. She's now down below $15 billion. Approximately 36 per cent has been wiped from her wealth," said BRW Rich List's Michael Bailey.
The reason is the dramatic fall in the iron ore price, which has sunk to a new six-year low under $US60 a tonne. The price has halved in the past year alone and is now less than a third of its 2011 peak.
Photo:
Gina Rinehart signs a $US7.2 billion finance deal for
the Roy Hill project. (Supplied: Roy Hill)
We need to see bankruptcies before it's over.Andy Xie, economist
"We've been surprised by the speed and pace of the fall in price, but the direction has been expected for some time by the market," said UBS commodities analyst Daniel Morgan.
The low price is a blow for Gina Rinehart's family company, Hancock Prospecting, whose prime source of cash is a lucrative iron ore joint venture with Rio Tinto, along with the decades old Rio royalties.
The Hope Downs Joint Venture accounts for most of the $2.6 billion in revenue the company made last financial year.
Iron ore price may fall below $US40: analyst
The pressure will continue to mount for miners with economists warning the price of iron ore could fall much further.Andy Xie is an independent economist based in Shanghai who previously worked for Morgan Stanley and the World Bank.
He was one of the few to accurately predict the Asian crisis in 1997 and the sub-prime mortgage crisis in 2008, and now he believes iron ore will slump below $US40 dollar a tonne.
"On the production side, the supply is still rising, when Chinese demand is declining - obviously there needs to be a price war," said Mr Xie.
"We need low prices to take out some high-cost production capacity.
"In China, or elsewhere, I think the fair price might be between $US50-60 but, in order to take our high cost capacity we need the price to go lower, we need the price to go under $US40 for some of the projects to be taken out - i.e. we need to see bankruptcies before it's over."
Commodities analysts in Australia are less bearish.
"I wouldn't have thought $US30 - that would wipe out nearly all production," said head of research at Patersons Securities, Rob Brierley.
"There are times when the market overshoots both positive and negative, so it could go as low as mid-$US50s in the near term I would have thought."
Even at that price it is unfortunate timing for Gina Rinehart to be taking on the biggest gamble of her career - to operate her own mine - the $10 billion dollar Roy Hill project.
When it ramps up to full capacity, it will be Australia's fourth largest iron ore producer, behind Rio Tinto, BHP and Fortescue.
A father's dream fulfilled
Historian David Lee said it is fulfilling her father Lang Hancock's dream."Lang Hancock's main fortune was built on royalty deals. He wasn't able to bring to culmination some of the more ambitious ventures in his own right to establish a mine," he said.
"That was certainly one of his long-term goals - he pursued it vigorously over many years. I think Gina Rinehart is continuing the family tradition in this regard."
After a ten-year struggle, Gina Rinehart negotiated a $7.9 billion debt deal using a combination of multiple export credit agencies and commercial banks.
It is considered a smart deal - because she shares the risk with her Asian-based joint venture partners - Posco, Marubeni and China Steel Corporation.
It's about more than money for her - she could live a very hedonistic lifestyle and do nothing else.Michael Bailey, BRW Rich List
"To finance this project has been the largest mainland mining resource financing project in the world. We're talking about a big amount of money gone in to make possible what we're beginning to see today," Gina Rinehart told a company dinner last year.
"But firstly, I'm sorry, it's only recently using that money - it has been ourselves and our partners who have dished in to their pockets and contributed almost all that you see today."
That is something that has gained Mrs Rinehart the respect of many in the business community.
"She's not collecting trust payments and just sitting on them as some people might do if they got a big inheritance," said UBS analyst Daniel Morgan.
"She's determined to make her own way ... It's about more than money for her - she could live a very hedonistic lifestyle and do nothing else. She's obviously got some of the entrepreneurial spirit Lang Hancock had and is determined to make something," said BRW's Michael Bailey.
Roy Hill has 'half-decent' ore
Determined or not, much of the project's success comes down to the quality of the iron ore."The Roy Hill mine, I think they may have some half-decent quality - 59-60 per cent [iron content] - product in early years but, over the life of the mine, the grade is very similar to Fortescue's Chichester ranges at around the 58 per cent mark, commanding a discount of $US10 a tonne," said Rob Brierley.
The breakeven [for Roy Hill] might be in region of $US50 a tonne.Daniel Morgan, UBS commodities analyst
With the iron ore price dropping, the discount becomes even more important and the break-even price is the key.
Fortescue chief executive Nev Power admitted in January the miner is making as little as $US7 a tonne, but was working hard on lowering costs. Since then, however, iron ore prices have fallen further.
"For their Roy Hill project which is not in production yet, and yet to demonstrate these numbers, the breakeven might be in region of $US50 a tonne," said Daniel Morgan.
Roy Hill is a 55 million tonne per year project and, when it comes on-stream, it will add to the oversupply - potentially pushing prices even lower.
The biggest and lowest cost miners - BHP, Rio Tinto and Brazil's Vale - are all pumping more production on-stream.
No price bottom without bankruptcy: analyst
Economists say it means junior miners will go under."I think some of them will go bankrupt. When the iron ore price has bounced you will read it in the news - people will go bankrupt," said Andy Xie.
"Until we see bankruptcy, the price has not bottomed. This year you should be able to see this drama unfolding."
The fall in the iron ore price is the latest drama for Gina Rinehart.
She is suing Channel 9 over the 'House of Hancock' miniseries, and she has had highly publicised bitter court disputes with her children and Rio Tinto.
One thing is clear. Gina Rinehart is a formidable force.
"I think in a way she is already much more successful than Lang Hancock, and she has probably already achieved many things that Lang could not," said mining historian David Lee.
Roy Hill will be her greatest achievement - so long as the slump in prices does not continue indefinitely.
You can see Emily Stewart's story tonight on The Business at 4:30pm and 8:30pm (AEDT) on ABC News 24 and 11:00pm in your local time zone on ABC.
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-10/gina-rinehart-risks-all-on-hope-downs-mine/6293898
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