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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: energyplay who wrote (60695)	3/2/2005 5:57:15 PM
From: smolejv@gmx.net	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

>>Most heap leaching is FAR away from people and residential areas.<< yeah, I know. news.bbc.co.uk

To: energyplay who wrote (60695)	3/3/2005 1:42:17 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 74559

European cars go smaller, cheaper Isabelle Cortes Posted Thu, 03 Mar 2005 Small, cheaper and cheerful are the three ingredients European car makers are wielding at the Geneva Motor Show to try to stave off the rising tide of Asian imports on their lucrative home market. Several mini city cars were launched at the show in the western Swiss city, which opens to the public on Thursday, and other manufacturers were promising more to come this year. "The two major trends at the Geneva show are cheaper cars, and ones that are easier to use in town," said Philippe Guedon, designer of the pioneering Renault Espace people carrier. "Drivers are looking for practical rather than showy cars, while urban areas are becoming congested," he added. The Europeans — France's PSA Peugeot Citroen and Germany's Volkswagen among them — have over the decades met local demand for handy small cars. But industry observers said they were adopting an aggressive stance to counter growing competition. Analysts at investment bank Goldman Sachs said the Europeans did not want to repeat the mistakes of the US-based groups — General Motors, Ford Motor Company and DaimlerChrysler. During the 1980s and 1990s, Japanese and South Korean manufacturers successfully gained a foothold in markets traditionally controlled by the US Big Three, partly by offering smaller cars. Asian car makers gained market share in Europe in 2004, helped on by the strength of the euro which makes Japanese and South Korean products cheaper. Small cars accounted for most of the gains made by Korean firms in western Europe last year. Hyundai's Atos, the Daewoo Matiz and the recently launched Kia Picanto helped them seize a 16 percent market share in the segment. Goldman Sachs predicted that while profit margins were slim with small cars, the Europeans would respond in kind. Evidence of that approach was on show in Geneva, with the launch of the brightly coloured 3.4 metre Citroen C1 and Peugeot 107. Volkswagen was also promising — though not yet showing — a small car called the Fox for Europe "Thanks to its size and price, the C1 is placed at the entry point for the compact vehicle segment," Citroen chief Claude Satinet said. The Citroen and its near twin Peugeot are due to go on sale in June with both petrol and diesel engines. Both brands of the PSA group are promising a price around €8500 ($11 000), competing head on with the South Koreans on price. Pricing has been helped by shared development and production in a new plant in the Czech Republic, where labour costs are lower than in France or western Europe. Volkswagen is adopting a similar policy with the Fox, which will be imported from one of its plants in Brazil, where the car is already on sale. u>NOTE: 75% of the cars sold in Brazil are 1.000cc engine which pays low taxes. "A market for compact city cars is emerging. It's currently in the hands of cars made by rivals, which aren't quite as modern as ours," said PSA chief executive Jean-Marie Folz in Geneva. Yet, Folz joined forces with an Asian rival — Japan's Toyota — to make the C1-107 family. Toyota also unveiled the Aygo in Geneva, which, like the French duo, shares the same platform, concept, engine and most of the body panels. The Japanese sister or cousin will also be launched in June in 10 European cities. Toyota is planning to raise its overall annual sales in Europe from 916 000 to 1.2 million cars by the end of the decade, if not earlier.