• Asahi Glass posted a 5 percent decrease in sales for H1 2012, down by ¥30.4 billion as a result of the fragile global economy. It said the global economic environment for first six months of the year was characterised by a gradual recovery, but the pace of economic recovery decelerated.
• Bennu Glass, based in Kalama, Washington, US, has opened for business and made its first production-quality wine bottles. Bennu, which plans to produce 100 million bottles a year, is owned by New York-based financial firm Medley Capital, which invested approximately $30 million in the $109 million Cameron plant.
• Despite an environment strongly characterized by uncertainty, RHI AG realized the second highest quarterly revenues in the group’s history, which were only €2.0 million below the record level of the fourth quarter of 2011.
• Japan’s Nippon Sheet Glass announced this month it is to cut a further 90 jobs at two Pilkington factories in the Northwest of England. The factories affected are at Ormskirk and St. Helens. The St. Helens factory shed 150 jobs in February. NSG say they will shed 3,500 jobs worldwide by March 2013. The once giant Pilkington Group was taken over by NSG in 2006.
• Magnesita Refratarios SA, the world’s No. 3 producer of fireproof material for steel mills, saw second-quarter net income surge 30 percent from the prior three months after revenue rose faster than costs and a timid steelmaking recovery helped boost demand for some refractory products, the company said in a securities filing on Thursday. On a year-on-year basis, profit jumped 19 percent.
• Carborundum Universal, Murugappa Group, reported a 30.8 percent decline in net profit at Rs 38.42 crore for the quarter ending June 30, 2012. The total income from operations in the reported quarter rose to Rs 503.08 crore from Rs 473.72 crore registered during the same period last year, but margins came under pressure owing to rising input costs, strong dollar and a challenging customer market.