The weather wasn’t friendly but the welcome at Holster Engineering certainly was when a 30 strong crowd of engineers descended on the Tokoroa’s Holster Engineering for the Maintenance Engineering Society’s Kaeser Compressors Network Evening.
Bruce, Marty and the staff, 10 of who have been with the company for more than 22 years, provided refreshments and a well appreciated BBQ for those that had made the trek to the South Waikato.
The Kaeser Compressors Network Evening series is as much about highlighting the capabilities of local companies as it is about spectacular achievements or interesting maintenance challenges and the Holster Engineering evening did not pull up short on providing reassurance to local clientele. From the heavy machine shop with a 50T capacity chuck to the 12m centre lathe, horizontal borer, the light machine shop, metal spray shop and cranes, it was obvious that this crew is experienced, ready and capable. Not only in Tokoroa though, the team maintain a prepacked box of site gear ready to do onsite metal spray repair anywhere in New Zealand. Now that’s pre-planning!
The MESNZ Kaeser Compressors Network Evenings are hosted to showcase local operations and provide networking opportunities for engineers across all regions of New Zealand. The evenings offer the opportunity to take a look at the host operation and discuss common issues and solutions in a relaxed after work environment. Open to interested members of the public, the nights are well patronised.
The Maintenance Engineering Society is active across New Zealand, providing professional development opportunities for maintenance engineers and manufacturing operations to network and share innovations and experiences; both at a national level at their annual national conference or at these regional events. The 2017 National Maintenance Engineering Conference will be held at the Claudelands Event Centre, Hamilton in November.
| A MESNZ release || August 2, 2017 |||
A plastics processing facility in Lower Hutt now has the capacity to turn over 200 million plastic drink bottles a year into high grade food-safe packaging, thanks to a $4 million Government grant.
The facility was today opened by Environment Minister Dr Nick Smith and Associate Minister Scott Simpson.
“This new plastics processing facility is an important part of the Government’s programme of building New Zealand’s recycling infrastructure. We are encouraging Councils and the public to do more to recycle plastics like soft drink bottles and fruit and vegetable punnets, but we also need the facilities in New Zealand to be able to remanufacture them into usable products,” Dr Smith says.
“The significance of this project and the Government’s $4 million investment is for the first time having the capacity to recycle polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic into food safe packaging. This high-tech, onshore recycling solution will mean greater employment in New Zealand, less energy used in transport and a reduction in the importation of virgin PET plastics for manufacturing.
“China recently announced a ban on importing waste and recyclables from other countries, including New Zealand. This will reduce end markets for our recyclables, and makes it even more important that we are able to recycle on shore. Flight Plastics will be able to recycle 6000 tonnes of the 8000 tonnes of PET plastic collected for recycling each year in New Zealand.
“As a country we need to be thinking smarter about ways to reduce our waste, and this facility will provide a fundamental change in the way plastic waste is managed,” Mr Simpson says.
“It is pleasing to be able to back an innovative project such as this, which shows Kiwi ingenuity is able to develop practical ideas which enhance our clean, green image.
“The expense of new infrastructure, as well as cost of getting products from one place to another for recycling, has sometimes limited opportunities for on-shore economic development in this space. This is where our Waste Minimisation Fund shows its strengths. The Government’s dedicated fund, created through a levy on waste disposed of at landfills, is available to support these kinds of projects.”
The Waste Minimisation Fund provides financial support to projects that reduce environmental harm and provide social, economic and cultural benefits. It is funded from a levy introduced by the National-led Government in 2009, which is charged on waste disposed of at landfills to discourage waste and to fund recycling initiatives. More than $80 million has been awarded to more than 130 projects to date.
| A Beehive release || August 2, 2017 |||
The Reserve Bank aims to improve the effectiveness of its prudential regulation through a combination of simpler regulations and bolstering its supervisory activities.
Deputy Governor Grant Spencer said in a speech to the Kanga News Capital Markets Conference today that the Bank is considering how it might improve its regulatory framework. Two catalysts in this regard are the recent IMF Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) report, and the Bank’s recently initiated review of bank capital adequacy.
“We must maintain the high international reputation of the New Zealand financial system. Within that, we seek to maintain and build on the Bank’s non-intrusive supervisory approach and simple-yet-conservative prudential requirements.
“Compliance with the international prudential frameworks is not always a black and white choice. The Basel framework sets minimum standards for key prudential requirements, but often offers a menu of choices within those standards, for countries to tailor to their specific circumstances. A small country like New Zealand implicitly has a greater degree of freedom.
“We will continue to place emphasis on getting the right incentives in place for prudent institutional governance, supported by effective market discipline that increasingly makes use of technology advances,” Mr Spencer said.
“We want to simplify the current regulatory regime in a number of areas, but also heed the IMF’s advice about improving the effectiveness of our supervisory model. The IMF has recommended an increase in resourcing to achieve this.
“We believe the supervisory regime could be usefully bolstered through increased use of thematic reviews on topics of broad prudential interest. We are also looking to make greater use of targeted reviews by external experts in cases where serious non-compliance becomes apparent at particular institutions.
“With regard to the current review of bank capital adequacy, we are leaning towards simplifying both the allowable capital instruments and the methods for measuring risk, though we are in the consultative phase and far from making any decisions. We do not believe that New Zealand’s relatively vanilla banking system warrants a high degree of complexity in its capital regime.”
Mr Spencer said that the Bank will also review the minimum capital ratios. New Zealand’s relatively high-risk profile, due to high industry and portfolio concentration, supports a conservative approach relative to international peers.
He added that the Bank is mindful of inefficiencies that can be created if its prudential requirements needlessly or disproportionately add to the cost of financial intermediation, stifle innovation or disadvantage some institutions over others.
“The Bank sees its current Dashboard project as an important step in an on-going effort to support and enhance more effective and efficient disclosure for banks, insurers and other financial institutions.”
The Bank will explore how the macro-prudential framework can be made more robust through a stable and well-signalled policy process. The Bank will also be applying its key principles of simplicity, incentive alignment and conservatism in the upcoming review of the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Act. More information:· Read the speech: Banking regulation: where to from here?
· Listen to excerpts of the speech on Soundcloud
| A RBNZ release || August 2, 2017 |||
As Australian domestic airlines wait to see whether lengthy passenger waits caused by enhanced airport security screening will affect business, a major union has warned that high staff turnover at airports is creating an additional security risk.
A nationwide air travel security alert began at the weekend after counter-terrorism squads launched armed raids on four Sydney properties over an alleged “Islamic-inspired” plot to bring down an aircraft – reportedly by using poison gas.
As a result, passengers now need to arrive at Australian airports two hours before domestic flights and three hours before international flights to allow ample time for screening.
This means that a traveller making a short day-trip for a business meeting – Melbourne to Canberra or Sydney to Brisbane, say – faces spending at least four hours at domestic airports, when their flight may last under 90 minutes or even less than an hour.
There can be no compromise on safety, but some travellers may decide to defer their meetings, use phone links instead – or even drive or use surface transport. Time will tell.
Meanwhile, the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU) has cautioned that the high turnover rate of staff at airports, linked to low pay and poor working conditions, is in itself creating a major security risk.
The turnover problem means large numbers of staff do not have full security clearance to operate at airports and do not have the experience or training to spot potential terror threats, the TWU warns.
“On any given day there are many hundreds of people working at our airports with no ASIO or Federal Police security checks,” TWU national secretary Tony Sheldon said.
Airport sleeping quarters for staff. Photo obtained by ABC earlier this year
“ This includes people doing regular work airside from maintenance to ground crew and, most concerning, security personnel. These staff are often on below-award rates, split shifts, forced part-time and are subject to horrific workplace injuries.
“Because of the appalling conditions many airport employees do not stay in jobs long and this high turnover rate is creating a security risk that our Federal Government and airport owners are wilfully turning a blind eye to.”
The TWU says low pay and forced part-time hours are a common feature of the aviation industry.
Media investigations earlier this year exposed instances of staff forced to sleep at Sydney Airport because they couldn’t afford to go home between shifts. See: Staff sleeping in swags by Aussie airport carousels
The TWU said airports and airlines are refusing to take responsibility for the conditions of Aerocare staff who work in their supply chains.
The TWU has also sounded the alarm over what it says is a complete lack of security screening at most regional airports served by QantasLink.
“Screening does not exist at airports at Armidale, Lord Howe Island and Moree in New South Wales, Port Lincoln and Whyalla in South Australia and Charleville, Blackall, Miles and Longreach in Queensland.
“Airport workers and our cabin crew are contacting us because they are concerned about their own safety and the safety of the travelling public given no checks are being done at these airports. Again while the Federal Government and airport owners like to appear to be concerned about security in reality there are gaping holes in operation,” Sheldon said.
The aviation industry is highly profitable. The TWU notes that profits at the four main airports in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane increased to AUD 1.8 billion last year and Qantas is now highly profitable.
“Our airports are clearly making billions of dollars in profit but are not putting funding into security,” Sheldon said.
| An eGlobalTRavelmedia release written by Peter Needham || August 2, 2017 |||
The Connecticut-headquartered engine and aerospace leader will pay compensation to Indian airline IndiGo after not being able to supply enough spare engines that power Airbus A320neo jets.
Pratt & Whitney is paying compensation to Indian airline IndiGo as the manufacturer struggles to fix glitches in engines that power Airbus SE’s new A320neo jets.
“We continue to have a higher number of engine removals, and sufficient spare engines have not been available,” IndiGo President Aditya Ghosh said on a conference call Monday. “The operational disruptions are quite challenging, and we are not happy with that situation.”
The airline, operated by InterGlobe Aviation Ltd., was forced to ground as many nine new A320neo jets on some days, Ghosh said. It may be a year or so before Pratt & Whitney implements design changes to the geared turbofan, he said, declining to comment on the amount, mode or the timing of the compensation.
The groundings, which emerged in recent months, are holding back IndiGo’s push to add capacity to maintain its domestic market share of more than 40% amid a travel boom triggered by an emerging middle-class flying for the first time. The airline, India’s biggest and the world’s top customer for the A320neo, has said in the past it will consider a rival engine manufactured by CFM International, an alliance of General Electric Co. and Safran SA, if glitches persist with the Pratt engines.Pratt Confidence
Pratt, a unit of United Technologies Corp., is confident it’s getting a handle on the problems, saying last week that it still expects to hit a 2017 delivery target of 350 to 400 engines. The company is incorporating revised carbon seals to address a durability issue and should have a fix by October for a separate glitch with the combustor liner, United Technologies Chief Financial Officer Akhil Johri said in a recent interview.
While he acknowledged the issues are affecting customers, Johri said last week that “we feel GTF problems are understood and behind us to a large extent, from a production point of view.”
India has the largest fleet of A320neos and the country’s aviation regulator earlier this year ordered two airline operators to inspect powerplants with more than 1,000 hours of service. Pratt has been working to fix durability issues and production snags that have hampered the debut of the engine, which was selected to power new jets from Airbus, Bombardier Inc. and Embraer SA.
“A320neos have not been delivered as per the plan with Airbus,” Interglobe Aviation Chief Financial Officer Rohit Philip said, adding it is hurting the company’s profitability. “To make up for the shortfall, we had to go to the aircraft-leasing market, and had to enter into short-term leases for used A320s.”A Crucial Market for Pratt
India is a crucial market for both Airbus and Pratt, with IndiGo having ordered 430 of the A320neo jets, of which 22 have been delivered. Go Airlines India Ltd. has five in operation and was awaiting deliveries of 139 more. State-run Air India Ltd. and Vistara, the local affiliate of Singapore Airlines Ltd., also fly A320neos, but they are powered by CFM engines.
IndiGo, controlled by billionaire founders Rahul Bhatia and Rakesh Gangwal, will begin owning aircraft, purchasing them using cash in hand, in a move away from a sale-and-leaseback model it has followed so far, Philip said. New aircraft will be in service for more than the typical six years that the carrier now sees and will enable the airline to cut down on leased planes, the company said.
“We are shifting our fleet acquisition policy to allow us to reduce our operating costs, which will result in higher profitability in the longer term,” Philip said.
IndiGo said it had total cash of 101.8 billion rupees ($1.59 billion) as of June.
Profit for the quarter ended June 30 rose 37% to 8.1 billion rupees ($122.22 million), the company said Monday. IndiGo has made money every year since at least the period starting April 2009, even as the Indian airline industry lost a combined $10 billion over a similar period.
IndiGo shares rose 0.4% to close at 1,290 rupees ($20.10) in Mumbai. They have risen 57% this year, compared with a 22% advance in the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex index.
| An Industry Week release || August 2, 2017 |||
In a recent white paper, SITAONAIR proposed what will be the second in-flight revolution: the adoption of open architecture and common service provision. This will allow airlines to make passenger connectivity part of the airline brand rather than a lock-in to a supplier’s refresh cycle.
Thought leadership article, authored by SITA.
With airlines embracing connected aircraft, the first in-flight connectivity revolution is clearly in full swing. But we’re now poised for in-flight revolution no.2: open platforms and common standards that will unlock new opportunities for digital service innovation.
By 2025, two-thirds of the world’s airline fleet will be connected – enabling passengers to transfer their entire digital lives seamlessly from ground to air.
At the same time this is bringing significant operational opportunities and benefits for everyone involved in the value chain – from airlines and airports to airframe and engine manufacturers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and service suppliers.
The drivers for upgrading to a connected aircraft are fourfold, according to SITA’s 2016 Airline IT Trends Survey: improvements to the passenger experience (46%), maintenance and aircraft health monitoring (15%), benefits for pilots (12%) and improvements for cabin crew activities, such as tablet apps and credit card payments (7%).
Stage 1
This first stage revolution is accelerating in pace. By 2019, two-thirds of the world’s airlines expect to operate fully connected aircraft, up from 37% in 2016.
By the same date, 74% of airlines plan to provide in-flight internet services (33% today), 60% plan to offer mobile phone services in-flight (21% today) and 92% of airlines are focusing on smartphone applications to interact with passengers.
Alongside these changes, the habits of passengers are transforming as they are themselves increasingly connected on the ground – and prepared to use their own devices. That offers the potential not only to deliver better in-flight connectivity and a more tailored passenger experience, but also to consider removing seat-back screens altogether – saving weight and fuel cost.
A drag?
However, the path to realising these opportunities is full of potential obstacles and constraints. There are operational limitations and incompatibilities across platforms, technologies, fleets and service providers’ own proprietary systems.
In part that’s because technology cycles for aircraft, satellite hardware and infrastructure, onboard communication equipment and mobile devices all evolve at different speeds. As a result, integration, innovation and the unification of the passenger portfolio and passenger experience is complex, time consuming and expensive.
“A lack of interoperability is one of the inhibitors in the growth of in-flight connectivity services across the world’s airline fleets,” says Craig Foster, Senior Consultant at Valour Consultancy.
“Many airlines weren’t even aware this was the case when they made a connectivity investment decision and I expect this will be a topic that grows in awareness and understanding soon.”
Stage 2
In a recent white paper, SITAONAIR proposed what will be the second in-flight revolution: the adoption of open architecture and common service provision. This will allow airlines to make passenger connectivity part of the airline brand rather than a lock-in to a supplier’s refresh cycle.
Fully open-system architecture, the paper suggests, is the only way that airlines can become fully empowered to have choice and flexibility in their in-flight services and optimise the business benefits of high-speed connectivity. Not least it offers the opportunity to separate key duties, so that the same provider is not responsible for both providing the system and performance monitoring.
According to Singapore Airlines’ Vice President of Product Innovation, Yung Han Ng: “Open system developments facilitate the creation of new and innovative ideas, and enable us to develop products/solutions that are platform and device agnostic, and with a shorter time to launch. If suppliers were to adopt open platform solutions in the future, it would be ideal.”
Best interests
The speed and scale of airline ambitions suggests that an open and common approach is the way forward and in the best interests of the industry as a whole. “The development of software platforms/middleware is obviously important,” comments David Lavorel, SITAONAIR CEO.
“In the broader Internet of Things space, a number of companies have developed connected device platforms and application-enablement platforms that have spurred growth. The airline space should not be any different.”
As passenger connectivity becomes more ubiquitous, providing solutions and systems on an open basis means that consistent passenger experience can be achieved regardless of the technology choices airlines may make or have already made.
Critically, this will promote innovation for airlines and passengers, and bring simplicity at application and user level.
“As OEMs open up their technology platforms,” concludes David Lavorel, “we are ready to work with airlines to maximise the resulting opportunities. We believe this is what airlines want.”
| An FTE release || August 1, 2017 |||
Minister for Food Safety David Bennett met with Dr Penny Lukito, the chairwoman of Indonesia’s National Agency of Drug and Food Control (BPOM) this morning.
BPOM is one of Indonesia’s five main regulators for food safety, animal health, and plant health.
It is responsible for the regulation and product safety testing of all processed foods, both domestic and imported.
“Meetings like this are important to ensuring that both agencies are aware of the goals each are working towards within their country’s food safety systems, a key tool underpinning agricultural trade,” Mr Bennett says.
BPOM and Ministry for Primary Industries signed a Food Safety Agreement in 2014 which promotes cooperation on food safety, particularly as it relates to management of risk and trade in processed food products.
“Indonesia’s demand for imported food with changing dietary habits, including milk, yoghurt, red meat, cheese and baby foods.
“New Zealand needs to have a good working relationship on all levels, but especially at a food safety level to ensure we can meet their needs, and expand our export markets.
“Next year will mark 60 years of diplomatic relationships with the two countries and it’s always positive to continue to solidify the relationship,” Mr Bennett says|
A Beehive release || August 1, 2017 |||