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Goodfellow/GB, a leading international supplier of metals, ceramics, polymers and other materials to research and industrial markets, has confirmed its commitment to the Chinese market by transforming its Chinese business activities from a Representative Office in Shanghai to a Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise (WFOE). 

The French Group RUBIS-PRECIS / MICROPIERRE / HIGH TECH CERAM has developed recently a wide range of wear-resistant custom products made in various high tech ceramics such as zirconia, alumina oxide, silicon nitride and carbide, zerodur, macor, boron carbide and quartz.

The CeramTec Group, which specializes in the development of advanced ceramic components, has equipped the ski jumping hills in Sochi with ALOSLIDE^® ICE, its ceramic inrun track system, for the XXII Olympic Winter Games.

CeramTec is producing ceramic components for Astrium GmbH’s experimental unit, which will be integrated in the International Space Station (ISS) in July 2014.

With Ignazio Piacentini, the PI Group, a global-scale technology leader for nano­meter-precision positioning devices and systems, has gained an expert in the field of photonics, system integration and machine vision for the new market sector silicon photonics.

According to a market study carried out by Freedonia, the US demand on advanced ceramic components is forecast to rise 5 % annually to USD 13,5 billion in 2017. 

On 29 January 2014, the Materials Applications Technical Committee of the German Ceramic Society met in Darmstadt/DE at the facilities of Merck KGaA to discuss the application of ceramic components in chemical and pharmaceutical process engineering.

The application potential of advanced ceramics is enormous, but industrial manufacturers have to reduce the production costs in order to place their products permanently in the end user markets. Due to the relatively high material costs, the market for fiber-reinforced ceramics is limited to a few applications in which the positive properties of CMCs such as mechanical and thermal stability are essential. However, the potential of these materials is considerably higher for applications in stationary energy technology (gas turbines, micro-gas turbines) or aerospace (aircraft engines).

A major novelty of the new EU Research and Innovation Funding Programme Horizon 2020, is the introduction of a dedicated SME instrument.

The biggest event in the medical device industry for French-speaking countries, MEDTEC France 2014, will take place in Lyon on 9–10 April 2014. All the key players in the medical device industry will converge upon Lyon for the 6th edition of MEDTEC France.