CTT-Refractory and glass news

CTT-Refractory and glass news

• Siemens is set to close its Israeli solar power division, having failed to find a buyer. It only bought Solel Solar Systems in 2009, but has lost close to €1 billion. The closure will affect 280 jobs.

• Mexican manufacturer Vitro is to increase its furnace capacity at its Vidriera Querétaro Plant with a $50 million investment. Once it has made the conversion the furnace will be the largest of its kind in Latin America. The production capacity of the plant is 250,000 tons per year, now that the VQ1 furnace has expanded its capacity from 400 to 440 tons per day and it can still grow given that this furnace has the capacity to melt over 500 tons per day. Vidriera Querétaro has three furnaces and 12 production lines.

• RHI AG announces that the management board members Giorgio Cappelli, chief sales officer, steel division, and Manfred Hödl, chief technical officer and chief sales officer, industrial division, will resign from board by mutual consent at the end of June 30, 2013.

• Tariq Glass Industries is proud to announce that its new 550 tons per day float glass plant has started its operations, which makes it now the largest float glass factory in Pakistan. This plant was erected with technical collaboration from Yaohua Glass, China.

• US demand for high-performance flat glass products is forecast to rise 8.2 percent per year to 910 million square feet in 2017, valued at nearly $9.2 billion. This will represent a substantial improvement from the performance of the market over the 2007-2012 period, when demand in area terms suffered an outright decline.

• The construction of the first Chinese production line for lithium aluminosilicate flat special glass, Qinghai Yaohua, has started in Ledu Industry Park on April 24. The total investment of the project is RMB 450 million Yuan. In Phase I, a first line will produce 30-60 tons per day. Phase II will include a special glass processing plant. The electric melting production technology is capable of producing borosilicate, aluminosilicate, lithium silicate, crystallite and others. The products are mainly used in the aerospace, high-end automobile, military industry, precise instrument and other high-tech industries.

• Vedanta Aluminium Ltd. is hopeful of reopening its 1-million-metric-tons-per-annum refinery plant at Lanjigarh, Orissa, India, by the end of June. The company hopes to procure bauxite from alternative sources to run the plant; the company shut down its refinery at on Dec. 5, 2013, due to acute shortage of bauxite to feed its plant.

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