Ian Melin-Jones
Rottneros denies sales rumour
In response to today’s article in Dagens Industri, Rottneros denies that any assignment has been given to advisors to dispose of any of the Group’s pulp mills. However, and as previously communicated, we are conducting active discussions about finding new use for the CTMP equipment from the closed Utansjö Mill.
For further information please contact:
Ole Terland, CEO and president, Rottneros AB, +46 8 590 010 00
Rottneros discloses the information provided herein pursuant to the Securities Markets Act and/or the Financial Instruments Trading Act. The Information was submitted for publication on Wednesday, 4 January 2012 at 10.45 CET (the Swedish version was released at 09.30 CET).
Rottneros is an independent producer of market pulp. The Group comprises the parent company Rottneros AB, listed on NASDAQ OMX Stockholm, and its subsidiaries Rottneros Bruk AB and Vallviks Bruk AB with operations involving the production and sale of market pulp. The Group also includes the wood procurement company Rottneros Baltic SIA in Latvia. The Group has around 308 employees and had a turnover of approximately SEK 1.7 billion in the 2010 financial year.
Previously announced deal in Australasia now closed
SCA has now completed the previously announced transaction of creating a joint venture in Australasia.
The joint venture is formed through the sale of 50% of the SCA operations in Australasia to the Australian-based Pacific Equity Partners (PEP). The finalisation of the transaction follows approval by the relevant authorities.
The first press release regarding the transaction was published on 4 November 2011
SCA is a global hygiene and paper company that develops and produces personal care products, tissue, packaging solutions, publication papers and solid-wood products. Sales are conducted in some 100 countries. SCA has many well-known brands, including the global brands TENA and Tork. Sales in 2010 amounted to SEK 107 billion (EUR 11.3 billion). SCA has approximately 45,000 employees. More information at www.sca.com
Rayonier Elects Thomas I. Morgan to Board of Directors
Rayonier has announced that Thomas I. Morgan, chairman and chief executive officer of Baker & Taylor, Inc. has been elected to its board of directors. Baker & Taylor is a leading distributor of books, videos, and music products to libraries, institutions and retailers. Morgan previously served on the Rayonier board from 2004 to 2008.
“Tom is a proven leader with broad experience across many diverse businesses,” said Lee M. Thomas, chairman of the board of Rayonier. “He knows Rayonier and our mission well, and we are delighted to have Tom rejoin our board.”
Morgan was elected chairman and CEO of Baker & Taylor in July 2008. He previously served as CEO of Hughes Supply, Inc. as well as CEO at Enfo Trust. He also worked in roles of increasing responsibility at S.P. Richards and Genuine Parts Company.
In addition to the Baker & Taylor board, Morgan serves on the board at Tech Data Corp. Previously he was a director of Hughes Supply, Inc., ITT Educational Services, Inc. and Waste Management, Inc.
Ashland Inc. completes sale of PVAc business to Celanese Corp
Ashland Inc. has announced it has completed the previously announced sale of its polyvinyl acetate homopolymer and copolymer (PVAc) business to Celanese Corporation. The proposed transaction included the transfer of the PVAc business, inventory and related technology. The sale does not include any real estate or manufacturing facilities. No purchase price was disclosed.
Ashland's PVAc business includes two brands, Flexbond(TM) and Vinac(TM) emulsions. To better support the transition, the products will be temporarily toll manufactured for Celanese.
Ashland Performance Materials is the global leader in unsaturated polyester resins and vinyl ester resins. In addition, it provides customers with leading technologies in gelcoats, pressure-sensitive and structural adhesives.
In more than 100 countries, the people of Ashland Inc. (NYSE: ASH) provide the specialty chemicals, technologies and insights to help customers create new and improved products for today and sustainable solutions for tomorrow. Our chemistry is at work every day in a wide variety of markets and applications, including architectural coatings, automotive, construction, energy, food and beverage, personal care, pharmaceutical, tissue and towel, and water treatment. Visit www.ashland.com to see the innovations we offer through our four commercial units - Ashland Specialty Ingredients, Ashland Water Technologies, Ashland Performance Materials and Ashland Consumer Markets.
Principles of Winding & Slitting two day seminar
Sensor Products Inc. USA is hosting a seminar in Birmingham, Uk on the 25 - 26th January 2012, the seminar highlights the Principles of Winding & Slitting.
This seminar will help you understand your existing winding and slitting processes so you can optimize them and reduce the problems – both real and potential by immediately applying proven best practices. Major areas of focus include web handling principles, understanding the structure of a wound roll, equipment used in winding from simple to complex and the many type of winders on the market and where and how they are used, all the ways winding can go wrong and how to avoid them and solutions if you can’t, and the three conventional slitting methods (razor, crush, and shear) and slitter operations efficiency. These topics will be addresses at many levels, providing rules of thumb and the theory behind them.
Who Should Attend
Anyone working with supervising operators or managing operation of web machinery will benefit from this unique course. This includes product/process designers, process engineers, quality personnel, sales/service, maintenance and lead operators. Understanding winding and slitting is also vital to anyone working with webs and web processes, including material suppliers and equipment and component suppliers.
About the Instructor
Chris Watson, President of Watson consulting & Assoc., and former president of Kroenert Corp. a world leader in web handling, coating, and drying technology, began working with web handling issues and helping companies resolve them in 1971. With over 20 years consulting on hundreds of projects dealing with a myriad of issues and materials, Chris continues to help Fortune 500 companies and small startup companies.
Chris has lectured for over 30 years at conferences in the US and Europe on web handling technology, coating methods, drying technology, paper physics, and specific issues related to customers’ needs. Realizing that learning curves can be significantly shortened and costly mistakes avoided by consulting with experts who "have been there before", US and foreign companies involved in web coating and converting have attended in-house conference and national conferences to hear Chris Watson's involvement with web coating technologies goes back to the 1960's.
After graduating with a degree in chemistry from The King's College, he was made Project Leader for coated products at Riegel Paper. During this time, he also did graduate work in Polymer Science. Watson has been a successful independent consultant in a wide variety of web related issues including the field of silicone, pressure sensitive, and various web-coating and converting processes for over 25 years. He has advised such firms as Fasson, Coated Products, Mystic Tape, KDP in France, Sterling Coated Products in England, Renker in Germany, OpSec Banknote & High Security in Newcastle UK, Lohja in Finland, and major machine builders in the US.
• Understand what center and surface winding is and their best use
• Understand five benefits of gapped and nipped winding
• Understand the importance of how air enters a wound roll and problems with too little or much
• Understand rewind slip clutches and learn how to wind multiple rolls on one shaft and when differential winding is needed
• Understand what causes the most common wound roll defects and how to remedy them
• Understand how winding contributes to web bagginess and how to minimize it
• Understand what is the best setup and application of all slitting methods and why
• Center and surface winders
• Gap and nipped winders
• Differential winding
• Roll transfers
• Un-winders
• Specialty winding
Slitting
• Fracture Mechanics
• Razor Slitting
• Crush Slitting
• Rotary Slitting
• Shear Slitting
• Slitting in Registration (Stripe Slitting)
• Alternate Slitting Methods
• Slitting Operational Efficiency
The Process of Winding
• The goals of winding
• Winding and winder definitions
• Building a roll structure
• Center and surface winding
• Gap and nipped winding
• Roll dynamics
The Solutions of Winding
• Wrinkling during winding
• Too tight or too loose
• Scratching & debris
• Roll slippage
• Shifted layers
• Buckling within a roll
• Deformations
• Gauge variation defects
• Baggy webs
Below you can download the course brochure and syllabus
BASF participates in US American technology company Renmatix
BASF is participating with $30 million through BASF Biorenewable Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG in the American technology firm Renmatix Inc. The BASF subsidiary led a $50 million financing round, joined by new and existing investors.
The technology company Renmatix has developed the Plantrose™ platform. With this patented process, industrial sugar can be produced from lignocellulosic biomass (wood, cane trash or straw). This technology makes it possible for the first time to produce industrial sugar in large quantities and at competitive cost from non-edible plant mass. “The Plantrose technology could allow us in the future to broaden our use of renewable raw materials while improving the cost effectiveness of our value chains even further. In the partnership with Renmatix, BASF is pursuing a new direction while simultaneously underlining its corporate strategy of offering even more sustainable solutions,” said Dr. Josef R. Wünsch, Senior Vice President Modelling, Formulation Research and Technology Incubation at BASF.
In the Plantrose technology, biomass is split into cellulose and sugar in supercritical water at high temperature and pressure in a two-step process. Since the Plantrose technology utilizes non-edible biomass as feedstock, it is not in competition with feed and food production. “Thanks to the partnership with BASF we can now develop and commercialize our technology more efficient. We have already demonstrated the functionality of the Plantrose process in a pilot plant. In cooperation with BASF, we will be moving it to the industrial scale,” said Mike Hamilton, Chief Executive Officer at Renmatix.
Industrial sugars are important renewable resources for the chemical industry and can be used, for example, to produce biofuels or basic chemical products and intermediates by fermentative processes. The availability of industrial sugars in sufficient quantities and at favorable cost is therefore important for the competitiveness of the products.
BUTTING HeRo® of impressive size
The BUTTING HeRo® (Heat-resisting Roller) has been used since the mid-1990s very successfully by the world’s leading steel producers. As a transport roller, it is an integral part of heat treatment facilities and is constructed and produced individually for the relevant annealing task. External diameters from DN 100 up to DN 700 and wall thicknesses of up to 60 mm are always possible.
Now a customer has ordered the largest size ever produced by BUTTING: 400 x 35 mm, and 5,530 mm in length.
The benefits of the BUTTING HeRo® convinced our customer, whose order was for 10 furnace rollers. The roller body, at the heart of the HeRo, consists of a high-quality BUTTING pipe made from plate with optimum forming and storage tolerances, made from the material 2.4633. This is suitable for very high temperatures of up to 1,200° C. A single furnace roller weighs an impressive amount: more than 1,600 kg. The overall volume for the order thus amounts to more than 16 t.
The 10 HeRos were delivered at the beginning of November. They will be used in a heat treatment facility for steel plates with wall thicknesses from 6-150 mm and temperatures from 600-1,160° C. Since this facility is in operation on a daily basis 24/7 for 365 days a year, a good deal is riding on the robust BUTTING HeRos®: Furnace downtimes because of changing the roller are to be minimized, thus reducing the cost of maintenance measures and downtimes.
The individual design of the BUTTING HeRo® brings crucial benefits to the customer. These include its outstanding durability through the use of materials resistant to high temperatures and with a low oxidation tendency and good wear resistance. In addition, we offer careful processing until the product is ready to be installed, the lowest possible tolerances required by the manufacturing process and the high running accuracy which this ensures. Furthermore, if after many years in use there is any loss of straightness and roundness tolerances, there is a possibility of reprocessing by special straightening and calibration procedures. The prerequisite for this is provided by the mechanical properties of the material selected, the roller bodies formed from steel plate.
However, the crucial advantage of HeRo is that no water cooling is required, which is sometimes necessary with traditional furnace rollers; this considerably reduces energy costs. Thus the amortisation period of a BUTTING HeRo® is distinctly shorter than for other materials.
Let the BUTTING HeRo® convince you!
BUTTING - Progress by Tradition
Portucel Group strengthens presence in Mozambique
As part of its strategy of exploring opportunities for growth and sustained value creation in the southern hemisphere, the Portucel Group has further strengthened its presence in Mozambique by obtaining a provisional Land Use Permit (DUAT) for an additional area of 182,886 hectares in Manica Province, issued by the Mozambican government (Council of Ministers Resolution of 19 December 2011).
This new permit was granted under the agreement in principle reached between the Portucel Group and the Mozambican government in 2008, under which land use rights had already been granted for an area of 173,327 hectares in Zambezia Province. The Group now has at its disposal a total area of approximately 360,000 hectares for eucalyptus plantations and for commercial farming by its employees and local people.
Court orders Vacon to pay compensation in China
Vacon has been sentenced to pay compensation in the court case in China. Vacon was accused of importing components with the wrong customs tariff classification.
The court ordered Vacon to pay compensation totalling EUR 5.5 million which consists of unpaid customs duties as well as the penalty. In the opinion of the court, the correct customs tariff for the components in question was 8 per cent, and not 10 per cent as demanded by the prosecutor.
The compensation will have a net impact of some EUR 2 million on Vacon's financial result in 2011, and Vacon made a provision for this on 12 December 2011. Vacon made a provision of EUR 3.2 million already in the 2010 financial statements in respect of the court case in China. The compensation does not affect Vacon's guidelines for its financial result in 2011 updated on December 12.
"It has always been and will always be Vacon's explicit policy in its global operations to comply with both local and international legislation, rules and regulations. We are pleased that the court ruled in Vacon's favour concerning the customs tariff on the components, that it should be 8 per cent and not the 10 per cent demanded by the prosecutor. We are also happy that the matter has been brought to a conclusion, and we do not intend to appeal against the ruling," says Vacon CEO Vesa Laisi.
The court also imposed prison sentences of 10 and 12 years on two former employees of Vacon's company in China. These private individuals may appeal against their sentences.
Vacon first published a statement about the investigation by the Chinese customs authorities on 19 March 2010. The Chinese prosecuting authority decided to raise charges on 7 January 2011.
Gardner Denver Announces New Independent Auditor
Gardner Denver, Inc has announced that the Company's Audit and Finance Committee of the Board of Directors (the "Audit Committee") has appointed Ernst & Young LLP ("E&Y") as Gardner Denver's new independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2012, replacing KPMG LLP ("KPMG") following the completion of the audit for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2011.
"We have enjoyed a very positive relationship with KPMG and are grateful for the excellent work they have performed for Gardner Denver since 2002," stated Michael M. Larsen, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Gardner Denver. "The selection of E&Y followed a rigorous, competitive proposal process conducted by the Audit Committee, in which several firms including KPMG were invited to participate. E&Y emerged during this process as the best fit for Gardner Denver's long-term needs."
KPMG has confirmed that the change in auditor was not related to any disagreements about accounting principles or practices, financial statements disclosure or auditing scope or procedure between the Company and KPMG. In conjunction with this change, Gardner Denver filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission today. This filing can be accessed from the Investor section on the Company's website (www.gardnerdenver.com).