Businesses in China, also among them, most of the Finnish companies in China have been able to recover. Many estimates put Chinese GDP growth to still respectable 4% for 2020 as a whole. Heavy restrictions related to international travel are still causing challenges for many companies but hopefully vaccinations will help the situation in 2021 and things will return to normal. After all, not everything can be done in Zoom!

 

I stayed most of this year in Finland. After returning to China end of September it was surprising and very positive to see how well China, Chinese and businesses in China had recovered from the crisis. Finnish business councils and chambers in China (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and Hongkong) conducted 2020 Business Confidence Survey this autumn. Results are now out and show that despite of the difficult year Finnish businesses have confidence in Chinese market. Please have a look at the report via the link in this newsletter to see the details.

 

This month’s guest writer is an example of Finnish innovative technology company, Masercata, which is recognized as one of the world’s leading plasma arc furnaces corporations! 

Finally, FBCB earlier launched a new membership category with Premium Membership (for details see below in this newsletter). And now, we are extremely happy to announce that Nokia has become our first Premium member reinforcing their support for the Finnish Business Council Beijing community!

 

Wish you all better rest of the year, Happy Independence Day and peaceful Christmas!

 

Seppo Selkälä

Vice Chairman

FBCB

Big thank to all companies who replied to our survey. At the FBCB we were extremely happy about the amount of responses as 65% of all our member companies took the time to answer the survey questions. The data were analyzed by two interns of HKFinnCham and also by Nordic Match -company. The first report you can read HERE, and the latter one we plan to present with more analytics at an online/offline event in Shanghai December 14. We will send you more information about that later.

Happiness is a fabulous theme for the 70th anniversary of China – Finland diplomatic relations. In general, we believe that education greatly contributes to happiness. In particular, we want to focus on happy student life in support of higher education student and talent recruitment in China in the spirit of Finland’s government initiative of talent boost, which aims to attract increasing the number of international talent to Finland.

Our anniversary Happy Student-series include on-line campaign and a string of eventshighlightingthe importance of education for one’s well-being and the importance of well-being and happiness for learning. 

Want to get visibility during this campaign? There are plenty of possibilities to sponsor, donating gifts/awards, and be part of the Wrap-up event, probably even offering internship possibility to a Chinese talent in social media competition

Masercata Oy, is offering new generation technologies in metallurgy. Stronger, longer lasting materials can be made with short and effective processing. Great savings can be made with lower raw material costs and power consumption, at the same time emissions are reduced considerably. Carbon and dust can be reduced more than 20 times compared to the current methods; power savings can be up to 50%. Company’s products are Mazanasu series Super Plasma Furnaces and process technology. Patent rights for different areas are available.

It is possible to process wide variety of raw materials: Mining ores; like iron, laterite nickel, ilmenite. Waste material: bauxite residue, nickel hydroxide, generally, waste that contains 30% metals, 70% can be other materials, 20 – 50% moisture containing material is possible to directly process in the furnace, without pre-drying. Fine dust and slurries can be directly processed. For ex. used foundry chromite sands and workshop grinding dust with small metal content and impurities can be directly processed to final products. Traditional recyclable materials like metal scrap with impurities can be naturally processed. Metals are recovered efficiently from oxides up to 99.9%. High quality end products can be directly made from raw materials like metal scrap, ore and waste.

Picture below is from our TAest Centre in Finland.

The best single sample to describe or technology is the use Bauxite Residue as raw material (Bauxite Residue is commonly known as “red mud”, side product of aluminium making) It is toxic waste, which is globally produced about 200 million tons annually. Only few percent are utilized as good processing technologies have been missing. Globally “stocked” volume of red mud is 3 billon tons. Masercata technology is the most advanced solution to process red mud. After Masanazu furnace process ready iron-based metal products is one output, second is slag that is processed further. It is possible to fully utilise red mud and convert it to usable products: Normal or high quality iron and steel, (from 200 million tons of red mud it is possible to make over 60 million tons iron and steel products - including high quality super cast iron special products). Chemical industry raw materials Like Al2O3 that can be used to make aluminium or fireproof cement. Rare Earth Elements can be concentrated into the slag for easy recovery and Scandium multiplication 3- 30 times is possible. Toxic red mud is made toxic free, processed to products efficiently, saving energy, with minimal emissions while making products that could last 2 – 4 times longer than currently made products. The best part is that this conversion is profitable.

Metal castings are better quality ones than currently made; with fine microstructure, like after forging process, with less impurities and gas saturation (this makes often forging process obsolete). New Super Cast Iron material family has been developed, offering the best properties of iron and steel. It comes on structural, abrasion resistant, heat resistant and corrosion resistant forms– typically outperforming currently used materials by giving 2 – 4 times longer usage life or possibility to save ~20% trough better strength properties. Aluminum alloys up to 5 times higher strength (than currently available) are possible to make. Special steels where Carbon, Phosphorus and Sulphur can be cost efficiently reduced to 0.001% level are possible to make.

In the picture below: Metal Mould to make glass bottles which have 4 times longer lifetime that with earlier used mould.

Several furnaces are operational, in China we are looking forward to getting started. There is almost unlimited use for the end product applications: car parts, like disc brake rotors, train friction wedges, mining industry wear parts, wind mill metal parts, abrasion resistant plates and profiles, corrosion free water pumps – actually all metal parts can be made with less emissions, less power and with better quality. One practical sample of quality of the products is from daily life; Maserchef frying pan, made from super cast iron, offering the best properties of iron frying pan and coated steel pan, with a twist, coating (that can get damaged) is missing, but properties are like there is a non-stick coating, no oil (or only little, as with coated pan) is required. Outside finishing (like on the picture) is environmentally friendly, made with natural plant oils. Key of the product is fine microstructure, surface is so even and flat, there are no pores where food could stick. This demonstrates generally the products made with Mazanasu furnace; products that are economical to use, last long and offers superior properties. Above all products are manufactured with less emissions, less power and could be even made from waste raw material, that is not possible to process by other methods. Products made for industrial applications will give even greater benefits. We can make high quality metals from waste, with less energy and emissions.

In the picture below: MaserChef frying pan.

In the future we will see this new technology used in several applications: waste processing, when lower energy usage and less emissions are important in metal making and where superior metal material properties are required.

Finnish Business Council Beijing is part of Team Finland in China, and an outstanding platform for all Finnish businesses in China. For those companies which need more visibility, we have launched a Premium Membership. It's an upgrade from normal membership, as you can see from the table below.

For those companies in Finland, who are planning to expand their businesses to China, or are in the early stage and don't have an office in China yet, we have a distant membership. It's called Proxy Membership. A very cost-effective way to make your company known to a large audience, and get essential contacts for your future.

See all membership options HERE