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• Asahi Glass Co. has decided to shut down AGC Glass North America’s Kingsport Plant in Tennessee in order to improve the profitability of its photovoltaic cover glass operations. This plant closure will cut down more than 30 percent of the group’s manufacturing capacity for PV cover glass.

• RHI, a world market leader in refractories, has built one of the largest fusion plants for magnesia raw materials for more than €75 million in Norway. In this fusion plant, magnesia obtained from sea water is converted to fused magnesia; with a capacity of approximately 85,000 tons per year, the plant is one of the largest worldwide.

• Grob Glass reports massive drop in orders and is therefore forced to close its operative business by end of September 2012, since an ordinary business cannot be maintained under these circumstances. The company, specialised in the construction of glass furnaces and dismantling of existing lines, had been founded in 1982 by Alfred Grob.

• On Oct. 31, 2012, Verallia inaugurated its third furnace in Mendoza’s plant in Argentina. This is the most important industrial investment made in 2012 by a private company. This third furnace, mainly dedicated to the production of still and sparkling wine bottles, required an investment of $70 million. Its construction began in March 2011 and was completed during the second quarter of this year.

• The NSG Group is to close architectural float lines at plants in Sweden and Italy. It will close a float line in Halmstad, Sweden, by the end of March 2013. It will also close a float line in Porto Marghera, Venice, Italy; that furnace is currently in a state of hot-hold, and will shut down in January 2013.

• The Brazilian Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade will grant a $220 million credit to Fanavid SA to build a glass factory in Cuba, Hipolito Rocha announced.

• Cookson Group plans to split into two new listed companies on Dec. 19, 2012, with the current Chairman Jeff Harris, and CEO Nick Salmon, retiring at the same time. Following a strategic review, the board of Cookson has decided to split its businesses into two separate listed companies in what it is calling a “demerger.” Its Performance Material division will form a specialty chemicals company called Alent, while the Cookson Group, consisting principally its Engineered Ceramics division, will be renamed Vesuvius.

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• A sand mine in a small west coast of Scotland village has reopened and aims to export up to 100,000 tons of sand a year. Lochaline Quartz Sand, a joint venture between Italian mining company Gruppo Minerali Maffei and NSG Group, a global glass manufacturer, which operates under the Pilkington brand in the UK, opened the mine last week. The sandmine has lain dormant since the previous operator closed it at the end of 2008.

• Owens Corning’s new furnace in its Tlaxcala, Mexico, glass reinforcements facility is now operational. The Tlaxcala plant expansion will support increased manufacturing of OC’s corrosion-resistant Advantex glass and will initially produce assembled roving and dry-use chopped strands.

• Libbey is to lay-off more workers than originally stated and will change the retirement benefits of United States workers. The Toledo, Ohio, glass tableware company said in July it would cut about 5 percent of its global work force, but it has now changed that number to 9 percent.

• Air Products is to supply its integrated oxy-fuel solution to Jinxin Glass in Jiyuan, Henan Province, China. It will help Jinxin reduce emissions and improve productivity and quality in its glass production. Jinxin is a manufacturer of pharmaceutical borosilicate glass for local and overseas markets.

• The Ethiopian Hansom International Glass factory, which had temporarily halted production due to hikes in international furnace oil prices, is to relaunch production according to Xia Yong, general manager of the company.

• The increase of import duties and introduction of anti-dumping duties by the Brazilian government has created a new framework for investments in Brazil. This new situation requires an adaption of RHI Group’s plans for a production site for refractory products in the State of Rio de Janeiro.

• Resco Products Inc. has announced an across the board price increase effective Nov. 1, 2012. Resco products have been affected by increased cost of services and supplies in 2012 that cannot be off-set thru efficiencies; increases will range 4–7 percent.

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• The enterprise for the production of construction glass in Kairakum (Sughd, Tajikistan) has launched a new line for production of one-liter and two-liter glass jars. Daily capacity of the new production line will be 20 thousand containers. Currently, the company produces 10,000 units of one-liter glass jars and two-liter per day.

• AGY (Aiken, S.C., US) announced May 9 that it has increased production output of its “S-2 Glass” fiber reinforcements by 20 percent with the capability to further increase its output as market demands dictate. The company says this expansion enables AGY to meet growth in both the aerospace and industrial markets for high-performance glass fibers used for composite reinforcement.

• Nippon Electric Glass Co. says it will set up a subsidiary in South Korea to make and sell glass for flat-panel displays. The company says it aims to swiftly respond to clients’ needs by establishing a base handling everything from manufacturing to sales in South Korea, where there is a heavy concentration of production facilities for large panel makers, such as Samsung Electronics Co.

• The NSG Group says it intends to keep one of the two furnaces of its Gladbeck float plant in Germany out of operation until at least the end of calendar year 2012. The decision was taken as a consequence of demand reduction across Europe; production at the Gladbeck float line was interrupted in mid-April for a planned cold repair.

• Luoyang Float Glass Group of China announced its wholly owned subsidiary Longhao Glass shut down a float glass production line on May 15. The production line will be cold-repaired. This production line has been running well over six years, exceeding the designed furnace life.

• Cornelius Brennand Group will open a float glass plant in northeastern Brazil through its subsidiary Companhia Brasileira de Vidros Planos. The R$550 million (about $310 million) plant will begin operation in the second half of 2013.

• RHI-AG invested roughly EUR 2 million in expanding production capacity at the plant in Trieben, Austria. The investment covers a new 2 kiloton press and a grinder for bricks; with this investment, the production capacity will be increased by 15p percent to 63,000 tons per year of refractories for the nonferrous metals industry like copper, aluminum or zinc.

• Corhart Refractories (Buckhannon, W.Va., US), a Saint-Gobain subsidiary, has announced to be laying off 69 workers starting July 6; this company makes ceramic products used primarily in glass and steel furnaces. The layoffs are specified “not permanent.”

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• Joint venture partners Owens-Illinois Inc., Berli Jucker Public Company and Saigon Beer Alcohol Beverage Company have announced the opening of a glass container manufacturing plant in My Xuan A Industrial Park, Ba Ria Vung Tau province, Vietnam.

• A new venture has been announced between Corning and Samsung, which introduces a new glass substrate technology, called ‘Lotus‘. The glass will form a high-quality substrate for organic light-emitting diode panels, with enhanced dimensional stability even when exposed to the high temperatures required for OLED production.

• As part of the company´s continuing efforts to enhance flexibility and become more customer centric, Owens-Illinois Inc., announced plans to create an integrated supply chain operation and a new technology group that aligns the company´s engineering expertise with its R&D capabilities.

• The board of the NSG Group has approved a program of actions designed to improve the profitability of the company. The measures are intended to protect the business in the short term and also to re-establish profit growth from fiscal year 2013 onwards.

• Workers at the Bennu Glass plant have chiseled away tons hardened glass from the crippled melter of the wine bottle plant here, and a new furnace and 100 employees should be ready to restart the shuttered plant in July, company officials say.

• The A.P. Green firebrick plant announced it would close its doors in Mexico (Missouri) on March 31, putting 80-110 workers out of a job. RHI Refractories, which owned the plant, was in deep debt of $1 billion caused by asbestos lawsuit claims.

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