Hotel and restaurant group Whitbread has announced it will create 10,000 new jobs in the UK over the next three years.

The new jobs will come as a result of Whitbread’s rapid expansion of its Premier Inn and Costa Coffee businesses, which already saw the creation of 2,500 jobs in the 2011/12 period.

Whitbread increased the number of Costa Coffee stores in the UK by 158 to 1,375 during the last year, and now has plans for an additional 10,000 Premier Inn rooms.


Henk Pauw, CEO of Sohar Aluminium, talks to Gay Sutton about the company’s role in promoting industry in Oman and creating jobs for local people.


Social business will make a transformational impact on the way we work in the 21st century, even more than email and the internet did 20 years ago. Ofer Guetta, social collaboration sales leader for IBM Collaborations Solutions, explains the concept to Martin Ashcroft.

Anyone who worked in an office before email will remember the impact it made. In my early years as a magazine editor my freelance writers would deliver their articles on a floppy disk—and we thought that was a marvellous improvement over printed copy.


Health care providers must constantly strive to offer a safe, accurate and cost-efficient service to their patients. One company helping to facilitate that goal throughout the Middle East is global health information technology system provider Cerner, as Richard Halfhide reports.


In its first partial year of production, Osisko Mining Corporation has reported net profit of $37.8 million for Q4 2011.

The Canadian Malartic mine reached commercial production on 19 May, 2011, contributing to a net profit of $18 million for the year, compared to a loss of $17.8 million in 2010.

Mine operating profits during the fourth quarter totaled $39.5 million, and $79.5 million for 2011.


Premier Oil has awarded a contract to Wood Group PSN for the delivery of integrated operations and maintenance support services to the Balmoral floating production vessel (FPV).

The contract, estimated to be worth around £250 million, will see Wood Group PSN provide managed onshore and offshore operations and maintenance services, including the management of selected procurement and logistics support.


Encana Natural Gas Inc, one of North America's largest natural gas producers, today opened the first liquefied natural gas (LNG) fueling station in Louisiana.

Located at The Relay Station in Frierson, the station will serve the fueling needs of heavy duty truck fleets, but is also open for public use (to those with an LNG vehicle and proper safety training).


Norway’s Statoil and partner ExxonMobil have made a large gas discovery in the Zafarani exploration well offshore Tanzania. 

Logging results have shown what Statoil is calling a “high impact discovery”, so far proving up to five trillion cubic feet of gas in-place.

The well has encountered 120 metres of excellent quality reservoir with high porosity and high permeability, Statoil said. The gas-water contact has not been established and drilling operations are ongoing.


Jorge Quijano, executive vice president of engineering with the Panama Canal Authority (ACP), talks to Jayne Alverca about taking Central America’s most high profile infrastructure program from concept to completion.