FOOD AND DRINK
Devro eyes efficiency, sales
British sausage-skin maker Devro PLC yesterday announced an investment program aimed at increasing sales and manufacturing efficiency after reporting a fall in last year’s sales volumes. The maker of edible collagen casings for bratwurst, salami and chorizo said it would invest £7 million to £8 million (US$8.59 million to US$9.81 million) and expected exceptional costs of the program to be £10 million to £12 million. It expects annual benefits from the program of £13 to £16 million by 2019, Devro said. Devro reported a 14 percent rise in last year’s underlying operating profit to £38.1 million, helped by favorable currency movement and lower input costs. Revenue rose 4.7 percent to £241.1 million. However, Devro said full-year sales volumes fell 6.6 percent.
PLASTICS
Avantium upbeat on IPO
Avantium, a Dutch company that has developed technology for making plastic from sugars rather than petrochemicals, yesterday said that it hopes to raise at least 90 million euros in an initial public offering (IPO), giving it a market capitalization of 264 million euros (US$279.66 million). Avantium is selling 8.2 million shares at 11 euros per share, or a 34 percent stake post-IPO, it said in a statement, with an over-allotment possible depending on demand. It already has commitments in place from investors for two-thirds of the amount it seeks to raise. Listing is scheduled for Wednesday next week.
STOCKS
Deutsche Bank shares fall
Shares in Germany’s biggest lender Deutsche Bank fell as much as 6 percent as the Frankfurt market opened yesterday, hours after the bank announced it would raise cash by issuing new shares. Shares in the bank were down 5.4 percent to trade at 18.1 euros just before 8:15am, making Deutsche the worst performer on the DAX Index of leading German companies. Sapped by heavy losses, Deutsche on Sunday said it would deepen a long-running restructuring to focus on home market Germany and raise 8 billion euros in new capital.
COMMODITIES
Copper poised to drop
Copper is poised to drop this year as higher US interest rates and elections in Europe curb demand, according to the chairman of China’s second-largest refiner of the metal. Prices would end the year lower than where they started, Jiangxi Copper Co (江西銅業股份) chairman Li Baomin (李保民) said on Sunday in an interview in Beijing as the government announced growth plans for this year. Jiangxi Copper plans to increase production to the maximum capacity of 1.36 million tonnes, compared with about 1.2 million tonnes last year, he said. Copper would average 45,000 yuan to 46,000 yuan (US$6,528 to US$6,673) per tonne this year, Li said. Global demand still looks set to exceed production, with China’s consumption growth at 6 percent this year, Li said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Budget to target productivity
Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond is to use tomorrow’s budget to allocate more than £550 million from the National Productivity Fund to boost innovation and technology. The funds are to support work in areas including electric vehicles, robotics and artificial intelligence, the British Treasury said in a briefing note. Hammond is also to set out details on work to boost 5G mobile phone coverage in Britain.
AGENCIES
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day