The.Economist.2007-02-10 (966424), страница 36
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He contrasts the transparent and temporary support from theFrench government with the covert support that Bombardier gets at home as orders are handed to it on aplate. He is particularly riled, he says, because “we are as big in Canada as they are in France”.André Navarri, the head of Bombardier's transport business, which has factories in Germany, France andBritain, dismisses Mr Kron's attack. “We have been making trains in Quebec for 30 years and exportingthem to the United States,” he says. “So it is no surprise that Montreal should turn to the localmanufacturer.”Just as Boeing and Airbus are at loggerheads in the middle of a boom for aircraft orders, the trainmakersare coming to blows at a time when railway operators are buying many more trains than usual.
Theworldwide open market for trains is estimated to be worth €24 billion, according to a study by RolandBerger, a German consultancy. The total railway market is about €70 billion, if you include infrastructure,signalling and control, and maintenance services.Bombardier, Alstom and Siemens account for 55% of the train-hardware business between them, and allthree are pulling further ahead of smaller producers such as Ansaldo of Italy and Spain's CAF. There areunconfirmed rumours that the makeover Klaus Kleinfeld is undertaking at Siemens might lead it to quitthe train business because margins are being squeezed, possibly by selling its train division to Kawasaki orHitachi of Japan.Much of the growth is in Europe, where congested roads are prompting town planners to turn to light railand trams to carry commuters.
After years of concentrating on high-speed trains, the emphasis now,especially for SNCF, is on renewing antique commuter and regional rolling-stock. Deutsche Bahn is doingthe same: it recently ordered 400 regional trains.Bombardier is no stranger to international trade disputes. Its aerospace arm competes with Brazil'sEmbraer in the market for regional jets. Canada and Brazil both went to the World Trade Organisationcomplaining about each other's subsidies, prefiguring the latest row between America and Europe over aidto Airbus.
The WTO showed both countries a yellow card, but they carried on playing the same old game.Trains will be no different.Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.About sponsorshipGerman wineBetter Spätlese than neverFeb 8th 2007 | GEISENHEIMFrom The Economist print editionHow German winemakers are responding to climate changeReutersJUST as Rheingau Riesling was making its mark again as one of theworld's finest wines, it has come under threat from an unexpectedsource: climate change.
The special quality of Rhine Riesling relies on amix of cool nights and warm days for slow ripening. At the end of the19th century Riesling wines, known as “Hock”, were fetching higherprices than claret from Chateau Lafite and Veuve Clicquot champagne,according to a list from Berry Brothers & Rudd, a London wineseller.Today's Rheingau Rieslings are again winning accolades, putting the eraof cheap and sickly German wines such as Liebfraumilch to rest.But warmer average temperatures are threatening to redraw the winemap. Red-grape varieties such as cabernet sauvignon and merlot,traditionally grown in the south, will migrate northwards by 200-400kmand up hillsides by 100-150 metres, says Hans Schultz of the ResearchInstitute at Geisenheim in the Rheingau.
By 2040, cabernet sauvignonwill flourish where Riesling does now.Fast becoming a rarityThe impact has already been felt in the past few years. Eiswein, a delicious dessert wine made fromgrapes that are picked frozen on the vine at a temperature of minus 7°C or below, is becoming ever rarer.This season the local growers had only two chances—on the mornings of December 27th and January26th—to pick grapes frozen enough. “That was our latest harvest ever for Eiswein,” says Arno Schales,whose family has grown Riesling since 1783 and has made Eiswein for the past 50 years.
His Eiswein thisyear, a crop of around 200 bottles instead of the usual 1,000-2,000, came from pinot noir grapes, whichsurvived the late warm weather without rotting.Many Rheingau growers this year gave up on Eiswein and instead picked the grapes forTrockenbeerenauslese—a wine made from grapes that have dried on the vine. German growers are alsoleaning more towards red grapes, though they favour the more traditional pinot noir and dornfeldervarieties over merlot and cabernet sauvignon. For their part, German consumers are choosing more locallymade reds than they did four years ago—27% of their red wine intake in 2006, up from 17% in 2002.Yet the main focus is still on better and more expensive Rieslings, for which there is strong demand,particularly in America. Germany has 60% of world production, despite the advances made by Americaand Australia.
Quality has improved as the new generation of growers has invested in better processing.But now the shifting climate is forcing them to adapt.Mr Schultz, who has written several papers on the subject, notes that the Geisenheim vines aredeveloping shoots seven days earlier, blossoming ten days earlier and starting to ripen 12 days earlierthan the 40-year average; they are especially affected by the warmer nights. “Riesling is very sensitive tothe soil and the climate,” echoes Ernst Büscher of the German Wine Institute, across the river in Mainz.Whether the growers can hold their own against upstarts in Canada and points north depends on how farthe climate trend continues.Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.About sponsorshipAviation in ChinaLofty ambitionsFeb 8th 2007 | SHANGHAIFrom The Economist print editionChina hopes to build a wide-bodied airliner to challenge Boeing and AirbusWHEN Xu Guanhua, China's science and technology minister, listed the nation's research priorities for2007 at a conference in Beijing last month, top of the list was the development of a wide-bodiedpassenger aircraft, a plan that senior officials first made public last year.
In part, China is keen to developa domestic competitor to America's Boeing and its European rival, Airbus, so as to capture part of thebooming domestic market. Boeing predicts that 2,880 airliners worth $280 billion will be sold in China inthe next two decades, making it the world's fastest-growing market for such aircraft. But the aim is alsoto foster progress in other fields, since building large airliners requires (and demonstrates) mastery ofdisciplines from aerodynamics to software. A formal timetable has not been announced, but officials hopeChina's first home-grown large aircraft will be airborne in 10-15 years.It has a long runway ahead.
Small and medium-sized aircraft, often based on Russian designs or reverseengineered from Western models, are already made in China; some, such as the twin-propeller, 60-seaterMA60, are exported to African and Asian countries. China also makes fighter aircraft, helicopters andtransporters. But the depth of expertise needed to build a wide-bodied airliner is still lacking.
As in otherfields, the government has encouraged foreign investment to help the industry develop.Boeing and Airbus are taking different approaches to China. Boeing's activities grew out of PresidentNixon's visit in 1972 and the company now buys parts from Chinese suppliers for all of its aircraft,including doors and wing panels for the 737, wing-ribs for the 747 and the rudder for the new 787. Airbushas taken a bolder step, announcing last year that it would establish a final assembly line, its first outsideEurope, in the northern city of Tianjin. Production of A320 airliners, Airbus's most popular model in Asia, isexpected to begin in 2009.Smaller manufacturers, such as Embraer of Brazil and Bombardier of Canada, are also establishing tieswith China.
Both firms have set up production facilities in the hope of boosting sales of their regional jets,and to fend off competition from the ARJ21, a locally manufactured regional jet being developed by AVICI, a state-owned aviation company.
The ARJ21 is a 95-seater twin-jet aircraft that strongly resembles theDC-9, and is due to go on sale in 2009 after several delays. (A joint venture with McDonnell Douglas inthe 1990s to build a Chinese version of the DC-9 failed.)Diamond Air, an Austrian aircraft-maker, announced the opening of Shandong BinAo, a $42m jointventure with the government of Shandong province, at the Zhuhai Airshow in November. It will initiallybuild under licence Diamond's DA40 single-engine planes, and later its twin-engine DA42, both of whichare used to train pilots.
Production is expected to be 150 aircraft this year, rising to 1,000 a year if thereis demand. Pilots are sorely needed in China—each year the airlines require roughly another 2,000 ofthem—and flying schools are setting up in droves. Gerald Seebacher, general manager of the project, saysthe Chinese-built DA40s will also be sold abroad.Airbus and Boeing do not have much to worry about yet, but China's aviation industry is developingrapidly and the goal of building a wide-bodied airliner is not out of the question. But getting such anaircraft off the ground is only half the battle. The issue is not whether the Chinese can develop theaircraft, notes AeroStrategy, a consultancy, but rather “whether they can develop one that is good enoughto win against the best that Boeing and Airbus can deliver.
Operational performance and reliability are twokey areas.”Another problem is certification: China's civil aviation authority would have to be officially recognised byits American and European counterparts before Chinese aircraft could be exported to America or Europe.And then there is the matter of convincing buyers that the aircraft is safe. Last month Robert Mugabe,Zimbabwe's president, was dismayed to find that his usual Boeing 737 was unavailable to take him andhis family to Asia.
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