December 2009 Edition
SAFETY
A recently released report states that an 80-year-old vehicular bridge that handles a fourth of U.S.-Canada trade, needs major repairs, including steps to shore up its main cables and deck. The Ambassador Bridge, running between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, is the busiest border crossing in North America, carrying 11 million trucks and cars annually. It is a critical link between major automakers and component suppliers in the U.S. and Canada.
PLOTS
In Japan there is a chronic shortage of burial plots which, in Tokyo, can now cost more than US$100,000. There is now a cheaper high-tech solution, multi story graveyards. From the outside they look like a block of apartments, a grey building five or six storeys high but with few windows which cost about a third of a normal graveyard. The vast majority of Japanese are cremated with the ashes placed in a ceramic urn which are then buried under a family tombstone. In a highrise graveyard, the urns are stored on shelves. Family members can retrieve them by swiping a card in a reader attached to a computer to activate a robotic arm which will pick up the urn and deliver it to a mourning room.
BRANDING
Kellogg's has developed a high-tech method to help stamp out imitation cereals by branding Corn Flakes with the company logo to guarantee the cereal's origin and protect against imitation products. If the system is successful, it could be used on other popular Kellogg brands including Frosties, Special K, Crunchy Nut and Bran Flakes. A staggering 128-billion bowls of Kellogg's Corn Flakes are eaten worldwide annually in countries as far a field as Guatemala, Japan and India. 2.8-million bowls are served in the U.K. each year.
PENSIONS
In a recent survey involving 11 countries conducted on behalf of the government of Victoria in Australia, Canada ranks fourth for its retirement-income system. The Netherlands was ranked No.1. The countries were ranked on their pension systems' adequacy, sustainability and integrity. Rounding out the top six countries, Australia was second, Sweden third, the U.K. fifth and the United States sixth. In the category of adequacy, the amount of income going to retirees, Canada was second after the Netherlands.
FAITH
A new survey by Pew Research estimates the total number of Muslims in the world to be 1.57-billion, or about 23 per cent of a global population of 6.8-billion. Almost two-thirds live in Asia, with Indonesia providing the biggest contingent (203 million) followed by Pakistan (174m) and India (160m).The highest Muslim population in Europe is Russia where 12.5-million adherents make up nearly 12 per cent of the total population.
PARTNERS
In 2007, Chinese-Russian trade reached US$48-billion, up from $5.7-billion in 1999, making China Russia's second biggest trading partner after the European Union. Current Russian-EU trade exceeds $250-billion, the lion's share being between Russia and Germany. Chinese-U.S. trade exceeds $400-billion. In 2006, two million Russian tourists visited China and a million Chinese visited Russia.
WHISKY
The American whisky market is seeing domestic sales flatten but overseas business is booming and driving overall growth. Jack Daniel's and Jim Beam have enjoyed six per cent growth in markets such as Western Europe and Australia for the past 10 years. Both compete head on with Scotch, Irish and Canadian whiskies. The U.S. whisky market was worth 28.3-million cases in 2008, more than twice the size of the French cognac market at 12.4-million but well below the scotch industry at around 100-million cases.
AIRSHIP
Engineers for Boeing Co. say they have advanced their design of a massive airship that could cut costs for energy companies in the Arctic. Though its 130-metre-long craft has yet to fly, Boeing estimates that an airship could float drilling rigs across Canada's remote Mackenzie Delta for a third of the cost of current methods, which involve trucks and ice roads. This could allow energy companies to drill three to six times more targets each year.
SAHARA
A dozen companies have agree to draw up blueprints for a project to harness power from the Sahara Desert sun to bring extra electricity to European homes. The plan, including technical and financial requirements to pipe power from the Sahara under the Mediterranean Sea to Europe will need three years to be developed. The project could supply 15 per cent of Europe's electrical needs by mid-century. It may create two million jobs.
SWEETENERS
The natural sweetener stevia looks set to become the next big thing according to research firm Mintel. Since December 2008, when the FDA approved the use of rebaudioside, an active ingredient in stevia, the stevia market has undergone tremendous growth. By mid-July 2009, sales topped US$95-million, in contrast to the $21-million for the whole of 2008.
CHRISTMAS
A British retailer is selling half Christmas trees this year. The artificial tree appears bushy and full from the front, but it is an illusion. It has been sliced down the middle so it has no back allowing owners to push the tree against a wall, saving valuable space.
URUGUAY
This South American country has become the first one to provide a laptop for every child attending a state primary school. This programme has cost the state US$260 per child, including maintenance cost, equipment repairs, training for teachers and internet connections. Over the past two years, 362,000 pupils and 18,000 teachers have been involved in the scheme. The total figure represents less than five per cent of the country's education budget.
GOLF
In 1998, golf replaced hockey as the most popular sport in Canada based on participation. In 2006, Canada's golf participation rate was 21.5 per cent, or 5.95-million, the highest in the world. The golf market is estimated to be worth C$13-billion, including fees, equipment, apparel and travel. There are 16,000 regular golfers in Russia playing on 3 18-hole golf courses although 40 new courses are under construction.
POWER
Researchers have discovered a magnetic equivalent to electricity: simple magnetic charges that can behave and interact like electrical ones. The work is the first to make use of the magnetic monopoles that exist in special crystals known as spin ice. Monopoles gather to form a magnetic current like electricity that could be used in magnetic storage or in computing. Magnetic monopoles were first predicted over a hundred years ago.
CRIME
An estimated 15 per cent of the world's economy is the proceeds of crime according to a recent Interpol conference. The FBI estimates that global organised crime generates profits of around US$1-trillion a year, equivalent to the entire gross domestic product of Australia. The scale and breadth of organised crime has shown a marked increase in the last two decades and due to globalisation and technological advances.
INDIA
McDonald's Corp is staking its future in India on burgers made from mashed potatoes, peas and spices. The company is expanding in India as a middle class is predicted to grow tenfold by 2025 and develop a taste for Western-style fast food. Sales were up 30 per cent in the first nine months of the year. There are 170 outlets in India but will add 120 more over the next three years. The chain, famous for its hamburgers, has to tailor its menus to local taste which means no beef because the majority of its 1.22-million people are Hindu and revere cows. It also does not serve pork in deference to Muslims.
TRADE
The European Union and South Korea have initialled a free-trade deal despite protests from EU car makers which fear Asian competition. The trade pact, which scraps nearly all import tariffs is potentially worth US$154-billion to both economies. The EU Association of Automakers says it gives South Korean car makers an unfair advantage because it allows them to reclaim tariffs on imported materials from cheap countries.
CONTAINERS
The new port facility in Montevideo which has now opened, will expand handling to over 1.1-million containers annually, making it the most advanced terminal in South America. The new facilities also include an additional 15.7-hectares of land for container storage reclaimed from the sea and a quay 350-metres long by 35-metres wide which can handle 14-metre draught vessels. A total of nine straddle cranes, four of which can operate with 11,000 TEU vessels (double the current capacity) have been incorporated.
MAURITIUS
This Indian Ocean island is hoping to boost its struggling real estate sector by allowing foreigners to buy rooms and suites in new hotel developments. Under the project buyers will get 45 days use a year of their room or suite plus a share of the income from tourist occupancy at other times. Tourism is the key driver of the nation's US$9-billion economy and a leading source of foreign exchange. Mauritius hopes to more than double the number of visitors on its beaches to two million a year by 2015.
TIMBITS
Building on its ambitious expansion in the U.S., the Canadian coffee giant Tim Hortons has opened a restaurant in Fort Knox, home to 147.3-million ounces of gold and where once was stored The Magna Carta, The United States Constitution and three volumes of the Gutenberg Bible. The Fort Knox coffee shop is the first for Tim Hortons on a U.S. military base which now has 500 stores in the United States.
MAGAZINES
So far this year, 383 magazine titles have disappeared in North America, or will soon. Another 64 magazines have gone from print to online only publications this year. These total put 2009 on track to challenge 2008 when 613 titles folded. The industry's true catastrophe was 2007 when 643 magazines closed down.
STUDENTS
In 2008, there were 42,000 students from mainland China studying in Canada. It costs up to C$18,000 in tuition fees for an international student in Canada for a bachelor's programme. However, there are 130,000 Chinese students studying in Australia, a country with 10-million fewer people than Canada.
SURGERY
A race is on in the U.S. to develop the potentially big thing in heart surgery: a replacement valve that can be implanted through thin tubes known as catheters rather than by traditional open-heart surgery. Analysts estimate a market for the product that could exceed US$1.5-billion within six years. The devices are currently being tested in older, critically ill patients in clinical trials. Many medical experts believe the process could revolutionize valve replacement operations.
FRUIT
Chile's fresh fruit exports for the 2008/2009 season totalled US$3.14-billion or $188-million less than the previous season. Chile needs to become less dependent on the U.S. and EU and develop markets in Asia and the Middle East.
Thank you for reading the A & A Economic News Digest. For more information visit our website www.aacb.com or contact A & A Contract Customs Brokers Ltd. at strehler@aacb.com.
Past issues of the A&A Economic News Digest can be found at http://www.aacb.com/publications/ed/index.asp
A recently released report states that an 80-year-old vehicular bridge that handles a fourth of U.S.-Canada trade, needs major repairs, including steps to shore up its main cables and deck. The Ambassador Bridge, running between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, is the busiest border crossing in North America, carrying 11 million trucks and cars annually. It is a critical link between major automakers and component suppliers in the U.S. and Canada.
PLOTS
In Japan there is a chronic shortage of burial plots which, in Tokyo, can now cost more than US$100,000. There is now a cheaper high-tech solution, multi story graveyards. From the outside they look like a block of apartments, a grey building five or six storeys high but with few windows which cost about a third of a normal graveyard. The vast majority of Japanese are cremated with the ashes placed in a ceramic urn which are then buried under a family tombstone. In a highrise graveyard, the urns are stored on shelves. Family members can retrieve them by swiping a card in a reader attached to a computer to activate a robotic arm which will pick up the urn and deliver it to a mourning room.
BRANDING
Kellogg's has developed a high-tech method to help stamp out imitation cereals by branding Corn Flakes with the company logo to guarantee the cereal's origin and protect against imitation products. If the system is successful, it could be used on other popular Kellogg brands including Frosties, Special K, Crunchy Nut and Bran Flakes. A staggering 128-billion bowls of Kellogg's Corn Flakes are eaten worldwide annually in countries as far a field as Guatemala, Japan and India. 2.8-million bowls are served in the U.K. each year.
PENSIONS
In a recent survey involving 11 countries conducted on behalf of the government of Victoria in Australia, Canada ranks fourth for its retirement-income system. The Netherlands was ranked No.1. The countries were ranked on their pension systems' adequacy, sustainability and integrity. Rounding out the top six countries, Australia was second, Sweden third, the U.K. fifth and the United States sixth. In the category of adequacy, the amount of income going to retirees, Canada was second after the Netherlands.
FAITH
A new survey by Pew Research estimates the total number of Muslims in the world to be 1.57-billion, or about 23 per cent of a global population of 6.8-billion. Almost two-thirds live in Asia, with Indonesia providing the biggest contingent (203 million) followed by Pakistan (174m) and India (160m).The highest Muslim population in Europe is Russia where 12.5-million adherents make up nearly 12 per cent of the total population.
PARTNERS
In 2007, Chinese-Russian trade reached US$48-billion, up from $5.7-billion in 1999, making China Russia's second biggest trading partner after the European Union. Current Russian-EU trade exceeds $250-billion, the lion's share being between Russia and Germany. Chinese-U.S. trade exceeds $400-billion. In 2006, two million Russian tourists visited China and a million Chinese visited Russia.
WHISKY
The American whisky market is seeing domestic sales flatten but overseas business is booming and driving overall growth. Jack Daniel's and Jim Beam have enjoyed six per cent growth in markets such as Western Europe and Australia for the past 10 years. Both compete head on with Scotch, Irish and Canadian whiskies. The U.S. whisky market was worth 28.3-million cases in 2008, more than twice the size of the French cognac market at 12.4-million but well below the scotch industry at around 100-million cases.
AIRSHIP
Engineers for Boeing Co. say they have advanced their design of a massive airship that could cut costs for energy companies in the Arctic. Though its 130-metre-long craft has yet to fly, Boeing estimates that an airship could float drilling rigs across Canada's remote Mackenzie Delta for a third of the cost of current methods, which involve trucks and ice roads. This could allow energy companies to drill three to six times more targets each year.
SAHARA
A dozen companies have agree to draw up blueprints for a project to harness power from the Sahara Desert sun to bring extra electricity to European homes. The plan, including technical and financial requirements to pipe power from the Sahara under the Mediterranean Sea to Europe will need three years to be developed. The project could supply 15 per cent of Europe's electrical needs by mid-century. It may create two million jobs.
SWEETENERS
The natural sweetener stevia looks set to become the next big thing according to research firm Mintel. Since December 2008, when the FDA approved the use of rebaudioside, an active ingredient in stevia, the stevia market has undergone tremendous growth. By mid-July 2009, sales topped US$95-million, in contrast to the $21-million for the whole of 2008.
CHRISTMAS
A British retailer is selling half Christmas trees this year. The artificial tree appears bushy and full from the front, but it is an illusion. It has been sliced down the middle so it has no back allowing owners to push the tree against a wall, saving valuable space.
URUGUAY
This South American country has become the first one to provide a laptop for every child attending a state primary school. This programme has cost the state US$260 per child, including maintenance cost, equipment repairs, training for teachers and internet connections. Over the past two years, 362,000 pupils and 18,000 teachers have been involved in the scheme. The total figure represents less than five per cent of the country's education budget.
GOLF
In 1998, golf replaced hockey as the most popular sport in Canada based on participation. In 2006, Canada's golf participation rate was 21.5 per cent, or 5.95-million, the highest in the world. The golf market is estimated to be worth C$13-billion, including fees, equipment, apparel and travel. There are 16,000 regular golfers in Russia playing on 3 18-hole golf courses although 40 new courses are under construction.
POWER
Researchers have discovered a magnetic equivalent to electricity: simple magnetic charges that can behave and interact like electrical ones. The work is the first to make use of the magnetic monopoles that exist in special crystals known as spin ice. Monopoles gather to form a magnetic current like electricity that could be used in magnetic storage or in computing. Magnetic monopoles were first predicted over a hundred years ago.
CRIME
An estimated 15 per cent of the world's economy is the proceeds of crime according to a recent Interpol conference. The FBI estimates that global organised crime generates profits of around US$1-trillion a year, equivalent to the entire gross domestic product of Australia. The scale and breadth of organised crime has shown a marked increase in the last two decades and due to globalisation and technological advances.
INDIA
McDonald's Corp is staking its future in India on burgers made from mashed potatoes, peas and spices. The company is expanding in India as a middle class is predicted to grow tenfold by 2025 and develop a taste for Western-style fast food. Sales were up 30 per cent in the first nine months of the year. There are 170 outlets in India but will add 120 more over the next three years. The chain, famous for its hamburgers, has to tailor its menus to local taste which means no beef because the majority of its 1.22-million people are Hindu and revere cows. It also does not serve pork in deference to Muslims.
TRADE
The European Union and South Korea have initialled a free-trade deal despite protests from EU car makers which fear Asian competition. The trade pact, which scraps nearly all import tariffs is potentially worth US$154-billion to both economies. The EU Association of Automakers says it gives South Korean car makers an unfair advantage because it allows them to reclaim tariffs on imported materials from cheap countries.
CONTAINERS
The new port facility in Montevideo which has now opened, will expand handling to over 1.1-million containers annually, making it the most advanced terminal in South America. The new facilities also include an additional 15.7-hectares of land for container storage reclaimed from the sea and a quay 350-metres long by 35-metres wide which can handle 14-metre draught vessels. A total of nine straddle cranes, four of which can operate with 11,000 TEU vessels (double the current capacity) have been incorporated.
MAURITIUS
This Indian Ocean island is hoping to boost its struggling real estate sector by allowing foreigners to buy rooms and suites in new hotel developments. Under the project buyers will get 45 days use a year of their room or suite plus a share of the income from tourist occupancy at other times. Tourism is the key driver of the nation's US$9-billion economy and a leading source of foreign exchange. Mauritius hopes to more than double the number of visitors on its beaches to two million a year by 2015.
TIMBITS
Building on its ambitious expansion in the U.S., the Canadian coffee giant Tim Hortons has opened a restaurant in Fort Knox, home to 147.3-million ounces of gold and where once was stored The Magna Carta, The United States Constitution and three volumes of the Gutenberg Bible. The Fort Knox coffee shop is the first for Tim Hortons on a U.S. military base which now has 500 stores in the United States.
MAGAZINES
So far this year, 383 magazine titles have disappeared in North America, or will soon. Another 64 magazines have gone from print to online only publications this year. These total put 2009 on track to challenge 2008 when 613 titles folded. The industry's true catastrophe was 2007 when 643 magazines closed down.
STUDENTS
In 2008, there were 42,000 students from mainland China studying in Canada. It costs up to C$18,000 in tuition fees for an international student in Canada for a bachelor's programme. However, there are 130,000 Chinese students studying in Australia, a country with 10-million fewer people than Canada.
SURGERY
A race is on in the U.S. to develop the potentially big thing in heart surgery: a replacement valve that can be implanted through thin tubes known as catheters rather than by traditional open-heart surgery. Analysts estimate a market for the product that could exceed US$1.5-billion within six years. The devices are currently being tested in older, critically ill patients in clinical trials. Many medical experts believe the process could revolutionize valve replacement operations.
FRUIT
Chile's fresh fruit exports for the 2008/2009 season totalled US$3.14-billion or $188-million less than the previous season. Chile needs to become less dependent on the U.S. and EU and develop markets in Asia and the Middle East.
Thank you for reading the A & A Economic News Digest. For more information visit our website www.aacb.com or contact A & A Contract Customs Brokers Ltd. at strehler@aacb.com.
Past issues of the A&A Economic News Digest can be found at http://www.aacb.com/publications/ed/index.asp
Posts
