• 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.”