Content about Italy

You don’t have to tell Barry Frangipane that the Internet has made the world a little smaller. Frangipane, a software engineer, was used to telecommuting from his home in Tampa Bay, but he didn’t realize how far telecommuting could reach until he read Under the Tuscan Sun, a book about an American who chucked it all to live in Italy.

Spanish solar-PV power generator T-Solar has announced it is expanding with the construction of a further 61 MW in Peru and India.

The group, which already has over 230 MW under operation and construction in Spain, Italy, India and Peru, has just brought its first PV power plant in India online. The new 5 MW plant uses thin-film amorphous silicon panels produced in the company's Galicia factory.

The new plant is located near the city of Jodhupur, Rajasthan, from which it will be feeding 8.5 GWh a year into India’s national electricity grid.

Westinghouse Electric Company has been awarded a contract for the supply of 12 replacement steam generators for EDF's French nuclear fleet.

Westinghouse will provide engineering design, analysis, and fabrication for its technologically advanced steam generator and will deliver the steam generators to EDF in collaboration with several industrial partners, including Valinox Nucleaire in France for the manufacture of steam generator tubes, Mangiarotti S.p.A. in Italy for the steam generator assembly, and other European forging companies.

Google announced at its Google I/O conference yesterday that its new computer, Chromebook, will go on sale in June in the United States and six European countries.

The first models will be made by manufacturers Samsung and Acer and will be available online from Amazon and Best Buy from June 15 in the US. Chromebooks will be available from leading retailers in the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Spain, with more countries to follow.

Owens Corning announced an investment today in a new furnace to expand production capacity at its glass reinforcements facility in Tlaxcala, Mexico.

The expansion results from increasing global demand for glass reinforcements, and is the fourth production capacity increase announced by the company’s reinforcements division in recent months. Capacity increases were also recently announced in Yuhang, China; Gous-Khroustalny, Russia; and Besana, Italy.

Saudi Arabia has received bids from six groups hoping to build four stations along a 450 kilometre high-speed railway line in the country.

Firms involved in the bidding include the German transport group Deutsche Bahn, Italy’s Astaldi, the UK’s WS Atkins,France’s Alstom, Austria’s Strabag, and Singapore-based ST Engineering Ltd.

Moving to a new country and taking over the running of a new company can throw up challenges for even the most experienced of managers, as Alan Swaby learns.

A bright horizon
To offer a quality product, you have to invest—and top of the list should be ensuring you have a workforce with the right skills, as Andrew Pelis finds out from Magdalena Jakubowska.
While most of the business world has endured arduous times during the recent economic slump, Poland has remained relatively buoyant. One of the bright beacons in Poland’s growing economy has been Biaglass, a name that has stamped Polish quality on glass lighting around the world.

Packing in the power
Marco Fregonese, marketing manager of Trasfor SA, spoke to Jayne Flannery about making an impact in the fast-growing world of electro-magnetic componentry.
For over 40 years Trasfor SA, based in Lugano, Switzerland, has been nurturing its reputation in the design and manufacture of custom built dry type transformers and inductors. “The length of time we have been operating in this industry and our subsequent expertise is something that very much sets us apart in this marketplace,” said Marco Fregonese, marketing manager.