• A Longueuil facility that prepares about 70 percent of Quebec’s glass for recycling is shutting down, and the company’s management says it isn’t sure where the glass will end up. Klareco processes more than 100,000 metric tons of glass in Quebec each year and sends most of it to the United States, where it is used to make insulation.
• Emhart Glass, a division of Bucher Industries, and Owens-Illinois, Inc. have signed a supplier agreement for glass forming machines and parts to all of O-I’s plants worldwide.
• Siam Glass Industry Co., Thailand, has reconfirmed its collaboration with Bottero. Having recently started up its new Rojana plant (with one furnace and three IS12 T.G. 4 ¼ machines, and a recent negotiation for the upgrade of two machines in the Samutprakarn plant), Siam Glass has decided the supply will once again come from Bottero.
• RHI has acquired an additional 26 percent share of Orient Refractories Ltd., India, through a public offer. The group had bought a 43.6 percent of the share of Orient in early March.
• Mexico’s Vitro is to invest more than $146 million to increase its melting capacity in its glass containers and automotive glass divisions; 89 percent of the budget will go to operations in Mexico, mainly to increase the manufacturing capacity of some of the furnaces and to improve and update its plants.
• The managing director of Sphinx Glass has declared that processing high quality flat glass will witness a strong growth in Egypt within the upcoming years, in the light of the domestic economic growth as well as growth in exports, especially to emerging markets in Africa, Middle East and North Africa, and Southern Europe.
• On May 1, 2013, ANH announces to customers its successful emergence from bankruptcy on April 30, 2013; ANH and its affiliates originally filed for bankruptcy in the first quarter 2002.
• Refractory maker Vesuvius India Ltd. (VIL) will soon make the new manufacturing unit at Visakhapatnam operational. According to the company sources, this would be the third plant of VIL in the port city of Andhra Pradesh. VIL has four operating units in the country; the two existing Andhra Pradesh units have a capacity of 60,000 metric tons a year. The new unit will host an R&D centre.
• Officials with the Corhart Refractories plant in Buckhannon, WV, say up to 64 of the plant’s 150 employees will be temporarily laid off starting July 1. Corhart makes refractory products for the glass industry. Spokesman Bill Seiberlich of parent company Saint-Gobain SEFPRO said demand for some products in the industry has declined recently.