Cork airborne
The cork industry in the Alentejo may have an exciting new direction as researchers are looking at the possibility of making aero planes from pressed cork.

The natural fire retardant bark taken from the indigenous cork oak is being considered as a possible alternative for many things by scientists including ultralite two and four seater planes which could be sourced and moulded in Portugal for the French owned DynAero aircraft plant in the Alentejo.

The aerocork project, as it has been named, was launched last year along with three Portuguese companies. Demand for cork has reduced greatly due to the introduction of plastic stoppers and screw top wine bottles. There are currently around 12,000 people employed in the cork trade which exports over €1 billion per annum and accounts for more than 2 per cent of total exports. The total output of cork a year is 157,000 tonnes which is more than half of the world’s supply.

Car sales rise
Sales of cars in Portugal in January improved substantially following a poor year in 2009 where sales almost halved. According to figures released by the Automobile Association of Portugal (ACAP), 14,579 passenger cars were sold representing an increase of 62.1 per cent compared with January 2009.

The volume of sales last month represented a return to average levels for the past five years. The combined total for cars, vans and trucks was 17,819 units in January, an increase of 50 per cent compared with the same month last year.

Barclays best bank
Barclays Portugal has been selected as the best bank according to a mystery client survey by Multimétrica Estudos de Mercado, conducted in the second half of 2009. Barclays was declared top of a list of fourteen financial institutions in Portugal with an average performance rating of 92.5 per cent according to the three criteria measured in 5,291 audits carried out in branches nationally.

The audits were carried out by individuals posing as regular customers and evaluation of service included the internal banking environment such as queue lengths and the performance of bank clerks, cash machines and call centre service.

Busy weekend for GNR
The Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR) arrested eleven people over last weekend for a series of offences. Road checks were installed at various points across the Algarve on Sunday 31 to combat criminal activity and control foreigners according to a statement made by the Territorial Commander in Faro.

In Quarteira one citizen of Cape Verde aged 27 was detained for driving offences and in Loulé a Brazilian aged 23 was driving without relevant documents. Two French citizens and another person from Cape Verde were detained for driving with alcohol in their bloodstreams.

In Albufeira a Brazilian of 20 years was arrested for being in Portugal illegally and driving without papers. In Faro a Belgian man aged 64 was detained for disobedience having refused to do a test for alcohol and a Portuguese man of 39 was arrested for driving illegally on a motor scooter.

UK
Ryanair growing
Ryanair has suffered a net loss of €10.9 million for the final quarter of 2009, although this was significantly lower than the €101.5 million deficit it reported for the same quarter in 2008.

Passenger numbers declined by 12 per cent, but at the same time the cost of fuel dropped by 37 per cent.  Recently Ryanair announced its plans to open many new routes to and from Faro airport, but during the year it had also cut out some destinations which were not profitable.

Despite costs and the losses it has experienced, it nevertheless forecast that it expects net profits for the year to be in the region of €275 million. It claimed to be Europe’s fastest-growing airline with a passenger increase of 14 per cent in the third quarter of the year.  Indeed, other airlines have reported an overall decrease in the numbers of people flying during 2009.  Ryanair expects it will attract passengers away from using other airlines, planning to do particularly well in Spain, the UK, Italy and Scandinavia.

UK
Exports stabilising
Small and medium-sized manufacturers report an improvement in their export orders, according to the latest quarterly survey by a CBI business agency.

The picture was mixed, with 27 per cent saying that orders for their exports had increased with another 25 per cent saying they experienced a decline in orders, resulting in a balance of + 2 per cent.  This figure was the strongest performance for exports since January 2008.

At the same time, however, domestic orders are continuing to decline.  The report cites 23 per cent increase in orders for the UK market against 33 per cent who said they experienced declines in orders.

UK
Home shopping
Shopping online is more popular in the UK than anywhere else in Europe, according to research commissioned by Kelkoo, an online price comparison site.

UK consumers spent £38bn online in 2009, an average of £1,102 per shopper, and the total of online sales reached nearly 10 per cent of total UK sales. Germans followed the Brits with a total spend of £29.7bn, with the French spending £22bn, the research indicates.

The research results were interpreted as showing that online shoppers were increasingly more confident about making purchases on the internet with those willing and able to spend over £1,000 or more in a single transaction increasing from 12 per cent in 2008 to 25 per cent in 2009, with the recession being an impetus to the rise as online purchases can result in better prices.

UK
Scam alert
The Office of Fair Trading reports that nearly 10 per cent of British adults admit they have responded to a scam approach, with half of them saying they had lost £50 or more, while 5 per cent of them report loosing over £5,000.

The OFT reports that 73 per cent of adults had received a scam e-mail in the past year.   The Consumer Minister in the UK said the government had spent £7.5m to create "scambuster" teams across the UK. The National Fraud Authority has estimated the cost of fraud - including scams, online theft, insurance cheats and tax fraud - at £30bn year in the UK, the equivalent of £621 per adult.

The OFT claims that scammers are using increasingly sophisticated tactics to fool people into providing money or bank details and has warned the public to be vigilant as well as skeptical.  

Europe
Battery recycling
The EU has issued new regulations requiring some shops selling batteries to provide recycling bins for used batteries.  

Any provider selling more than 32 kg per year, or about one pack per day, will be obliged to make recycling bins available in their shops.  The EU initiative is part of cutting back on landfill use of expired batteries and reducing the number of new batteries which have to be manufactured.  

Currently the UK recycles only 3 per cent of portable batteries, but the goal has been raised to 45 per cent by 2016.  Hence, 97 per cent are placed in landfill, where the batteries could leak toxic chemicals into the soil.  About 30,000 tonnes of portable batteries are sold in the UK every year.

Cyprus
Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, expressed his optimism at current discussions aimed at finding a permanent solution of the division of Cyprus.

Discussions between the Turkish Cypriot leader and the Greek Cypriot president have been on-going since September 2008, but the last 16 months has seen poor progress.  The two indicated that progress had been achieved recently over issues such as governance and power-sharing. Other matters, such a property and security, seem not to have yet been agreed.

The country has been divided since 1974 after the Turkish military invaded in response to a Greek-originated coup which seemed to be hoping to make the island nation part of Greece.  Today, only Turkey recognises Northern Cyprus as a state.  The southern part of the country which is ruled by Greek Cypriots joined the EU in 2004.