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As the company continues to expand in both established and emerging electronics manufacturing regions, the electronics group of Henkel announced a new partnership to extend its presence in South Africa, signing on PEM Technologies to represent its line of Loctite brand electronics adhesives in the growing South African region.Though it is not often considered a major electronics manufacturing locale, South Africa is, in fact, one of the fastest growing regions for certain sectors within the electronics production market. Automotive, military/aerospace and contract manufacturing are all seeing significant growth rates and Henkel anticipates that this will only continue for the foreseeable future.\n\n"Recently, we have seen major manufacturers in automotive and in military/aerospace either transfer production from Europe to South Africa or set up additional, dedicated South African production sites," comments Richard Boyle, Regional Technical Service Manager for Henkel. "And, growth in the contract manufacturing sector--particularly for telecom, IT and entertainment products--is even more rapid and represents the largest area of expansion for Henkel," Boyle continues. "Establishing a partnership with a strong regional distributor like PEM Technologies is critical to our strategy for growth in this promising region." Steve Eglinton, Managing Director of PEM, is confident the company's relationship with Henkel will only serve to further enable customers' competitiveness. "Without question, Loctite is the leading brand of adhesives for electronics manufacturing and we are very enthusiastic about \nrepresenting Henkel materials throughout South Africa," says Eglinton. "Henkel's philosophy of supporting the customer through top-notch applications expertise, technical service and materials-based productivity enhancing tools is completely in line with PEM's approach. With Henkel's leading materials technologies, we look forward to helping customer

"With over 325,000 PV modules, the Jasper Project will deliver 180,000 megawatt-hours of renewable electricity annually for South Africa residents - enough to power up to 80,000 households through a 20-year power purchase agreement with Eskom, the South African power utility company. Selected by the South Africa Department of Energy (DOE) in the second round of bids under the REIPPPP, the project also marked Google's first renewable energy investment in Africa."

The current growth in the local and international engineering, civils and construction markets is expected to continue despite the current volatility experi- enced in world economic markets, reports the South African Association of Consulting Engineers (Saace). Saace CEO Graham Pirie says that even though the local infrastructure roll-out programme and the infrastructure investments from emerging markets such as China were initiated before the period of global market volatility, infrastructure builds cannot be halted as they are vital to the economic growth of countries. "Government's commitment of R500-bil-lion, in addition to the money invested in the 2010 FIFA World Cup stadiums, to be spent over three years, means that 2010 is a small component of a larger investment that government is encouraging," says Pirie. He comments that the infrastructure roll-out programme is necessary, given the 20-year infrastructure investment backlog that South Africa needs to resolve. Pirie says that events hosted in the country since 1994 have encouraged infrastructure reinvestment. "Prior to 1994, South Africa didn't host sporting or political events that would draw an influx of tourists into the country, so the need for infrastructure reinvestment was minimal. "From 1994, with the 1995 rugby World Cup looming, government got serious about resolving this. Certain sporting events, such as the 1995 rugby World Cup, the 2003 cricket World Cup and the 2010 soccer World Cup, focus the right amount of attention on infras- tructure reinvestment at the right time," says Pirie

\nCadiz, Spain - While significant challenges remain and large-scale applications appear relatively far out on the horizon, smaller scale applications, such as organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), are already being built into a variety of electronic products. Industry pioneers, such as G24i, have begun manufacturing their first generation of products, which in G24i's case includes a DSC-powered mobile phone charger and an award-winning "Lighting Africa" portable lamp that marries cutting-edge LED and dye-sensitized thin-film PV technologies. \n\nLooking to bring off-grid electrical power options to people in Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa and a still growing range of African countries, G24i in May was awarded the World Bank Group's 2008 "Lighting Africa Development Marketplace" prize for its solar-powered LED light, which uses the company's proprietary dye-sensitized thin-film solar cells in concert with light emitting diodes (LED) produced by Dutch lighting manufacturer Lemnis. \n\nG24i dye-sensitized thin-film solar cells are proving themselves rugged enough to endure some of the harshest conditions on the planet. Besides enduring the rigors of operating in various African locations, the company's DSC cells were used to generate electrical power for British explorer Robert Swan and his team during their two-week 'E-Base Goes Live' project in which they traveled to Antarctica. Despite poor sunlight, the cells contributed to the successful powering of satellite, digital and video conferencing and other communications equipment throughout the two-week long expedition.\n\nThe first person to walk to the North and South Poles, Swan is moving on to an educational sailing around the world project and G24i is working on sails for his craft that will have thin-film dye-sensitized PV cells embedded in them. \n

South African steel producer Highveld Steel & Vanadium on Friday announced that the disposal of vertically integrated assets Vanchem and its 50% stake in South Africa Japan Vanadium (SAJV), to Swiss firm Duferco Investment Partners, would be effective from August 29. The producer said in a statement to shareholders, that it had received approval from the European competition authorities, the South African competition authorities and the South African Reserve Bank, as well as the consent of the other shareholders of SAJV. The Competition Tribunal earlier this month announced that it had approved the sale of the assets, which formed part of the European competition regulatory body's conditions of the 2007 Highveld Steel acquisition by Evraz.

The Competition Tribunal on Friday announced that it had approved the sale of vertically integrated assets by South African steel producer Highveld Steel & Vanadium to Swiss firm Duferco Investment Partners. The deal formed part of the European competition regulatory body's conditions of the 2007 Highveld Steel acquisition by Evraz. Duferco's subsidiary, Vanchem Vanadium Products, would acquire Highveld Steel's Vanchem operations, as well as its 50% stake in South Africa Japan Vanadium and 350 ordinary shares in the Mapochs mine, which produced titaniferous magnetitic ore for Highveld Steel, and ore fines for Vanchem.

South Africa's largest steel producer, ArcelorMittal South Africa, has announced its first price decrease for the year and will cut the price of both hot-rolled coil (HRC) and wire rod by 5% as from October. The price of HRC and wire rod, which provide the base prices for flat and long steel respectively, will decline from their record levels, with the price to be cut by about R500/t on just about about all grades, barring plate which will remain unchanged.

South Africa's competition authorities have recommended approval of BHP Billiton's takeover of mining rival Rio Tinto

Shares in copper miners have surged over the past two months, but...

We have to look into declaring copper as precious, or our economy will not be able to grow," said the Minister of Communications, Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, at the official opening of black-empowerment cable manufacturer Malesela Taihan Electrical Cable's new telecommunications cable manufacturing facility in Vereeniging.