Europe

Iceland has little in the way of natural resources with the exception of clean energy, which it is putting to good use to boost the economy, as Alan Swaby discovers.

Honoured for Outstanding Export Achievement in the Global Business Excellence Awards and Best SME in the Best Business Awards, Alba Power had a good 2010 and is poised for an even better 2011. Senior sales manager Grahame Martin explained why to John O’Hanlon.

Final bids have been submitted for the £1 billion contract to build a new crossing over the Firth of Forth in Scotland.

Forthspan and Forth Crossing Bridge Constructors (FCBC), together representing eight bridge building and civil engineering firms,are competing for the principal contract to build the new bridge and connecting roads on the Forth Replacement Crossing (FRC) project.

The submission of the bids marks the last major step in the process before the contract is awarded in April, with work expected to start soon after the deal is signed.

DCNS, a French naval submarine and nuclear technology group, has paid €14 million for a stake in the Irish tidal energy developer OpenHydro.

Paris-based DCNS, a state-owned specialist in naval defence and nuclear energy systems, is taking an eight per cent stake in OpenHydro for €14 million, valuing the Irish company at €175 million.

Europe’s biggest manufacturer of solar panels is to create 300 new jobs at a plant in the UK.

Sharp said the expansion in Wrexham, North Wales, follows the extension of its production facilities and will increase the workforce from 800 to 1,100.

The company anticipates that the enlarged factory, which was first announced in July last year, will almost double production capacity, manufacturing an additional 8,000 panels every day by March 2011.

Angola has officially announced the selection of Statoil as an operator and partner in several offshore pre-salt blocks.

Angola’s national oil company Sonangol organised a restricted public bid round for access to pre-salt acreage in the Kwanza Basin in Angola. Pre-salt blocks are blocks where the main prospective interval was deposited prior to underwater salt accumulation millions of years ago.

Permission has been granted for construction of the final nine kilometres of the Corrib Gas Pipeline in Ireland.

The final stretch of the pipeline will bring gas onshore from the Corrib Gas Field, located 83 kilometres off Ireland’s north-west coast. The onshore section of pipeline will be underground along its entire route, linking the end of the offshore pipeline at Glengad to the gas terminal at Bellanaboy, County Mayo.

Permission was granted by Ireland’s planning board, An Bord Pleanála.

Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways has expressed “top level interest” in the UK airline Virgin Atlantic, according to reports.

According to the Sunday Times newspaper, the chief executive of Etihad has written to Deutsche Bank, who Virgin Atlantic hired last year to examine the aviation market and identify growth opportunities, to express his interest in acquiring the airline.

Abu Dhabi-based Etihad has so far refused to comment on the reports.

Petra Diamonds has announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the Finsch diamond mine in South Africa from De Beers.

Finsch is one of the world’s major diamond mines and South Africa’s second largest diamond mine by production. Petra said its acquisition marked a continuation of the company’s strategy to build a world-class diamond mining group.

Finsch will become Petra’s second major mine producing over one million carats per annum (mctpa), and will become its eighth producing diamond mine.