Company News

Vale’s controlling shareholders have nominated one of its former executive directors, Murilo Pinto de Oliveira Ferreira, as president of the company, replacing the current CEO Roger Agnelli. The nomination is subject to approval of Vale's board of directors. Murilo Ferreira joined Vale in 1998

Sandmeyer Steel Company (Sandmeyer) has appointed John M. Curley, III, as the Vice President of International Sales and Global Marketing, a newly created position in the company. In his new role he will oversee the development of business outside of the United States, a quickly expanding market for Sandmeyer.

DuPont Performance Coatings will increase prices across all of its product lines by up to 20% and more for some specific products or customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This increase applies to all coatings, particularly Industrial Liquid, Powder Coatings and the OEM automotive business. The price increase will be implemented in April 2011.

SENER has won several contracts for the design and supply of solar fields in Spain including the Aste 1A and Aste 1B, Termosolar Soluz Guzmán, Consol-Orellana and La Africana plants. These fields will use the SENERtrough company-patented parabolic trough collector technology, which is already in use, to great success, at several commercial plants in operation.

Kobe Steel will merge Kobe Welding Wire Co Limited into the company effective 1 April 1 2011 and carry out other organizational changes in production. This comes as a result of the decrease in demand for welding products in Japan, Europe and North America and the increase in competition in the Asian market.

Haihong (Samuel) Song has been appointed area manager of Jet Edge, Inc.’s new sales office in Shanghai, China. Song will be in charge of developing Jet Edge’s business presence in China’s swiftly growing manufacturing market. He will be responsible for directly overseeing the Shanghai office

Siemens Energy has received a follow-up order for the construction of a turnkey combined cycle power plant in Abu Dhabi. In collaboration with its partner, Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co., the company will build the Shuweihat S3 plant approximately 260km west of Abu Dhabi.

Statoil has completed the Kiwi well in Egypt’s El Dabaa License (Block 9) this week and the Discoverer Americas drillship will head back to the US Gulf of Mexico shortly. The exploration well targeted the Kiwi prospect located in the Mediterranean west of the Nile Delta, with a water depth of approximately 2700m at the drill site.

Nordex has received a contract from AES to supply 22 wind turbines for the Drone Hill project in Scotland. Currently, AES has more than 1700MW of wind capacity in Europe, China and the United States. The company has also signed a five-year Premium Service Contract with Nordex.

Mika Seitovirta has been appointed the new Chief Executive Officer of Outokumpu by its Board of Directors. He will assume the position effective 1 April 2011, succeeding current CEO, Juha Rantanen, who will leave the position 31 March 2011. Rantanen will support the new CEO until August 2011.