Manufacturing

Taste Holdings manages franchises, developing efficient and customer-focused brands tailored towards South Africa’s discerning diners and consumers of jewellery.

Jaguar Land Rover has announced the creation of 1,000 new jobs at its Halewood Operations manufacturing facility near Liverpool.

The new positions are to support ongoing demand for the Range Rover Evoque and Land Rover Freelander 2, and will take the workforce at Halewood to almost 4,500.

NASA and General Motors are jointly developing a robotic glove for astronauts and autoworkers to help them do their jobs better and reduce the risk of repetitive stress injuries.

The Human Grasp Assist device, known internally in both organizations as the K-glove or Robo-Glove, resulted from NASA and GM's Robonaut 2 – or R2 – project, which launched the first humanoid robot into space in 2011. R2 is a permanent resident of the International Space Station.

UK engineering giant GKN is said to be at advanced stages of talks to buy the aerospace unit of Volvo.

According to a report in the UK’s Sunday Times, GKN could pay up to £800 million for Volvo Aero, which manufactures aircraft engines and components.

GKN has plants in Bristol and Cowes on the Isle of Wight. Its aerospace business, which manufactures aircraft components, is its second biggest division, with sales last year of £1.5 billion.

Part of GKN’s strategy is to expand in aerospace.

Netherlands-based EADS, the owner of Airbus, has today reported better-than-expected results for the full year 2011.

Despite what it called a “volatile macro-economic context”, in 2011 EADS continued to grow and to improve financial performance, particularly thanks to commercial momentum backed by strong air traffic figures.

EADS’ order book in 2011 stood at a record €541 billion; and revenues amounted to €49.1 billion, up seven per cent from a year earlier.

Kraft Foods has opened a £17 million research and development facility at the home of Cadbury in Birmingham.

Facilities at the Global Centre of Excellence for Chocolate Research and Development in Bournville will include innovation labs, a pilot plant and a development kitchen. The centre will also be used to develop new products for other Kraft brands such as Milka and Toblerone.

The investment comes as the company said it will hire an extra 100 R&D staff in the UK, with 44 of those to be based at Bournville.

Britain’s last remaining train factory has been thrown a lifeline with the announcement of the four shortlisted bidders for the Crossrail rolling stock and depot contract.

The Derby-based Bombardier Transportation (UK) factory is up against bids from Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles of Spain; Hitachi Rail Europe; and Germany’s Siemens.

Crossrail will require around 60 new trains, each around 200 metres in length and able to carry up to 1,500 passengers, with key features to be air conditioning and inter-connecting walk-through carriages.

Columbus Stainless, based in Mpumalanga, South Africa, is taking a key role in a local logistics initiative designed to boost trade, reduce the cost of doing business in the area and unlock the region’s growth potential.

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.

Another tale of “are they or aren’t they” emerged today in relation to a possible alliance of some kind between General Motors and PSA Peugeot Citroen.

It has been widely reported that the two car makers are talking to each other, and have been for some time, but at the time of writing neither company has confirmed this.