Europe

The UK’s transport secretary is expected to unveil £9 billion of investment for UK railways later today.

The UK rail investment plan for 2014 to 2019, to be unveiled by transport secretary Justine Greening, includes a commitment to provide electric trains on the Midland Main Line from Bedford to Sheffield and Leicester; on local lines in the Welsh Valleys, and between Manchester and Leeds.

Vodafone Group has announced its acquisition of the New Zealand business of Telstra Corporation for £430 million.

The acquisition of TelstraClear was made through Vodafone New Zealand, the country’s largest mobile operator with more than 2.4 million customers. TelstraClear is the second largest fixed operator in New Zealand with a customer base that includes government and large corporations, and small & medium enterprises, as well as consumers. 

One of Poland’s biggest companies has embarked upon a campaign of global expansion, positioning it among the world’s largest copper and silver producers and paving the way for future growth.

BMW Group has today announced a £250 million investment in its UK manufacturing operations by the end of 2015.

The investment will be made at BMW’s manufacturing plant in Oxford, its steel body pressings operation at Swindon and its engine plant at Hams Hall near Birmingham, to support the company’s international growth strategy for the MINI brand with increasing volumes and up to 10 different models in the new line-up in the mid-term.

The move comes on top of the £500 million UK investment announced in June 2011 and will secure 5,500 UK jobs.

Chemicals manufacturer BASF has said it will expand its vinylformamide (VFA) capacity in Germany and China in order to meet growing global demand.

The company will expand its manufacturing plant for VFA in Ludwigshafen, Germany, as well as increasing its polymerization capacity. It will also build a new polymerization line for VFA in China for further processing of the feedstock from Ludwigshafen. This facility will be built at the Zhenjiang site, Jiangsu province.

Airline services company Gate Gourmet has agreed to acquire catering facilities owned by Qantas Catering Group in Australia.

The catering businesses, run by Q Catering, are a Riverside facility in Sydney and a Cairns-based operation in Queensland. Both offer a full suite of catering services, including menu development; meal production; aircraft provisioning; post-arrival unloading; and dishwashing and equipment warehousing. The Cairns facility also offers cabin cleaning.

London-listed Petra Diamonds has announced that the IFC has agreed to a $25 million loan to expand Petra’s Finsch Diamond Mine in South Africa.

Petra said that given the lead times between its now larger diamond tenders (after the acquisition of the Finsch mine) and the volatility experienced over the last 12 months of both the rand and diamond prices, the new revolving credit facilities will give it additional scope and flexibility to execute its capital expenditure programme and bring its stated production and revenue growth opportunities to fruition.

US-based Parker Hannifin Corporation has successfully completed its previously announced agreement to acquire the Olaer Group, headquartered in Deeside, UK.

The Olaer Group is a leading manufacturer of advanced hydraulic accumulator and cooling technologies for energy, mobile and industrial markets. The company has sales of approximately €150 million and 550 employees.

London-listed Heritage Oil has invested £541 million in a number of assets in Nigeria, it has been announced.

The company is buying a 45 per cent stake in OML 30, a producing oil mining lease in Nigeria, from Shell, Total and ENI, as well as a 45 per cent interest in other assets under the OML 30 joint operating agreement.

OML 30, located onshore in the Nigerian delta, includes eight producing fields and associated infrastructure, including a segment of the 850,000 bopd-capacity Trans Forcados pipeline.