USA and Canada

However clever the internals might be, a building is judged from the outside. Alan Swaby talks to one of the construction industry’s most innovative suppliers.

Rio Tinto has announced a C$10 million investment over five years to create a center for underground mine construction in Canada.

The Rio Tinto Centre for Underground Mine Construction will be based at the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) in Sudbury, Ontario, and will focus on innovative rapid mine construction and ground control for mining at depth.

Han-Tek Inc, a materials handling and systems automation company in upstate New York, announced today its acquisition of PowerLab Control Technologies, an industrial systems integrator in North Carolina.

Through this acquisition, Han-Tek is bolstering its solutions portfolio with process controls and SCADA capabilities. PowerLab is in the process of being integrated into Han-Tek's Controls Division.

QinetiQ North America has been awarded the engineering services contract for NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The new cost plus award fee contract begins on March 1, 2011. It has a five-year base period with three, one-year options. The maximum potential value of the contract is approximately $1.959 billion.

Under the contract QinetiQ North America and its partners will:

US food manufacturer HJ Heinz has reported higher-than-expected quarterly profits thanks to sales growth in emerging markets and strong global demand for ketchup.

Net income for the three months to 27 October was up 9 percent from a year ago, at $251 million (£157 million).

Total revenues fell 1.2 percent to $2.61 billion, as the strong dollar depressed the value of foreign sales, but leaving aside the dollar factor, Heinz claimed overall “organic sales growth” of 0.9 percent.

General Motors returned to Wall Street in grand style yesterday with the largest IPO in US history, raising $23 billion to start paying back its $50 billion government loan.

Almost half of the US Treasury’s share holding went up for sale at $33 a share for preferential buyers ($35 for others), but still leaves the government some way short of recouping its total investment.

SABMiller, the world’s second biggest brewer by volume, has reported a 13 per cent rise in interim profits.

The London-based brewer’s results were boosted by this summer’s World Cup and sales growth in emerging markets.

The group’s portfolio of brands includes international beers such as Pilsner Urquell, Peroni Nastro Azzurro, Miller Genuine Draft and Grolsch, as well as brands such as Aguila, Castle, Miller Lite, Snow and Tyskie. SAB is also one of the world’s largest bottlers of Coca-Cola products.

Just a week after declaring record results for its second quarter, Western Coal is back in the news after an approach from Walter Energy, Inc, a US producer and exporter of hard coking coal for the global steel industry, about a possible “strategic business combination.”

The combination proposal contemplates a plan of arrangement transaction whereby Western shareholders would receive a mixture of cash and Walter shares valued at $11.50 per Western share.

North America might be reluctant to end its love affair with gasoline, but a new Canadian venture is ready for when it inevitably happens, as Alan Swaby learns.

Lithium, apparently, is one of the most abundant minerals on earth. It has a role to play in the manufacture of ceramics and glass as a flux, in the foundry business as a casting aid, and as the core ingredient of lithium grease. But before the advent of mobile phones and laptop computers, not one in a hundred people would have heard of it.