June 21, 2010 - Business delegation to Zagreb - by Juho

I had a great pleasure to participate fact finding tour to Zagreb on June 14 to 17 as a member of Foreign Trade Committee of Central Finland Chamber of Commerce. The beautiful city of Zagreb, situated in Northern part of Croatia, is a lively capital with 800 000 inhabitants. The economical potential of Croatia among many other countries of the Western Balkan region has been under the shadow of Yugoslav’s wars. NATO membership and European Union integration process keep the local politicians busy. This was learned while visiting institutions such as International Chamber of Commerce, Embassy of Finland, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of Croatia. Effects of global economic crisis did not spare Croatia either. Year 2009 GDP was 45.38 Billion € with negative annual growth rate of -5.8 % and the estimated rate for year 2010 is 0.5 %. Furthermore, industrial production decreased by -9.3 %. Luckily Croatia is highly dependant on tourism which decreased only a little.

Automotive sector component production and the privatization of shipyards give potential for CuproBraze producers. Quoting Mr. Hubert Hödl, Vice President Marketing & Business Development of Magna International Inc., “We expect a recovery in our industry. Inside the 300 km circle around Zagreb there will be a production of one million cars per year until 2012. Besides this, Croatian based company DOG-ING has designed a three-seated electric car, ecologically acceptable vehicle to be used for city driving. The warranty period for the car, excluding a lead or lithium-iron-phosphate battery, is 5 years and the car will cost around 10,000 €. Following two hours of charging, the car will have 250 km driving distance.

Currently Croatia is the 2nd most developed country after Slovenia in the Western Balkan region. The core message by the politicians and representatives of the private sector during the visit was that, Croatia is searching foreign co-operation, especially in the form of Greenfield investments. As Croatia has excellent geostrategic location, well developed infrastructure and competitive productivity versus gross wage–ratio I have positive expectations that Croatia will establish its position as 28th EU member country either year 2012 or 13. In the future, Croatia will work for International companies as a spring board for market of 27 million people. Besides this, in case of EU membership there will be available massive amounts of structured cohesion funds for infrastructure, energy and environmental sectors.

Members of Ministry of Foreign Affair and Europe and Integration of Croatia with Mr. Juha Ottman, Ambassador of Finland

Scenery over the city of Zagreb

Tour to Puntijar's wineyard in Zagreb

May 24, 2010 - New Chairman - by Markku

CuproBraze Alliance had Board Meeting last Thursday May 20 over telephone. Nigel Cotton was elected a new Chairman of the Board for one year ahead. I was elected to continue as Managing Director. Pekka Halmet was elected the leader of the Marketing Team. The Marketing Team already has started working with a new brochure and presentation. The goal is to have them available at Innotrans 2010 in September.

April 15, 2010 - New Board - by Markku

Yesterday CuproBraze Alliance had Members Meeting in Finspong, Sweden, with 6 of 8 members represented. There are two changes to the Board: Finnradiator is now represented by Mr. Pekka Halmet, Chairman of the Board of Finnradiator, Umicore BrazeTec is represented by Dr. Hartmut Schmoor, Business Manager. I would like to welcome both "on board" and thank the resigned member Mr. Tero Kangas and resigned Chairman Mr. Karl Görtz, on their valuable contribution to the operation. An updated list of all Board members is shown on Contacts page. In the near future the new Board will have an organizing meeting and elect a new Chairman.

April 11, 2010 - Annual decision time - by Markku

Following up Juho's blog from last month, the Spring is finally coming, not only to Spain, but even to the Nordic countries, after the unexceptionally cold winter. A lot of snow means the risk of flooding in the Spring.

The coming week is important for Alliance, as we will have Board Meeting, annual Members Meeting and Open House at Brazing Centre. All these events take place in Sweden, mostly in the city of Finspong. Almost all member companies will attend. The change in CuproBraze marketing policy to focus on heavy duty applications has started to give results and we will continue with finetuning of the policy. More information will follow after the meetings.

At the same time we have Poland and our Polish-American member Seco/Warwick in our thoughts, after the catastrophic flight accident, where a lot of Polish state leaders lost their lives.

March 13, 2010 - Is the answer blowing in the wind? - by Juho

Last week I had an opportunity to visit Spain. I spent my winter holidays in the area of Costa del Sol, visiting Malaga, Torremolinos and Fuengirola. Even though the weather wasn’t as sunny as usual, I enjoyed my holiday. I managed to clear my mind completely of all the things related to work... Well, almost completely.

We flew over Central Europe to Spain. From the plane I saw long, impressive lines of wind turbines rising from the landscape. Rotating blades got my mind rotating around the possible applications for CuproBraze technology in the wind power industry, especially in offshore turbines.

As the turbines and wind power plants are getting bigger, it is often easier to find suitable locations offshore. But in addition to advantages, marine conditions set many technical challenges. At the sea the moisture, salinity and temperature alterations make the corrosion one of the major concerns. Now You probably can guess why I came to think about CuproBraze?

Accelerated corrosion tests (SWAAT, REP, salt spray, marine atmosphere) have shown that CuproBraze radiators are highly resistant to corrosion in marine atmospheric conditions. Moreover, when the corrosion eventually is formed, it is even and predictable so it doesn’t cause any nasty surprises. Naturally, the resistance can be even further reinforced by proper coating. These facts suggest that CuproBraze technology could play an important role in developing the corrosion prevention of wind turbine cooling systems, based either on air or water circulation.

The development of turbine technology is crucial as we are hoping to increase the share of wind energy production. When you combine fatiguing conditions, difficult access and high maintenance costs of offshore wind power plants, the case is clear: all the components must be highly reliable in order to keep the energy production efficient and economically sound.

February 1, 2010 - New year, new events - by Juho

At first, I would like to wish Happy New Year to all the readers also on my behalf. Year 2010 will be full of interesting events for CuproBraze Alliance. One of the biggest is Bauma 2010 – 29th international trade fair for construction machinery, building material machines, mining machines, construction vehicles and construction equipment. It will take place in Munich, on 19 to 25 April 2010.

Bauma 2010 is world's largest trade fair for the construction machinery sector. Despite the lurking recession, the event is expected to be huge. In 2007 it gathered over 500,000 visitors and 3,000 exhibitors around the world, so it's a "definite must" for the companies of this trade. Also I will attend in Bauma 2010, as a representative of CuproBraze Alliance and Finnradiator, together with Mr Daniel Schnee, Applications Manager of Umicore BrazeTec.

Bauma 2010 offers great scene to introduce the advantages of CuproBraze technology in thermal management systems. Along with tightening emission standards, such as Tier and Euro, the requirements for thermal management products are increasing. To comply with the new emission standards, average inlet temperatures of charge-air-coolers could reach 246 °C. A CuproBraze heat exchanger can operate at 290 °C without any problems such as creep and fatigue affecting performance or causing failure. It is CTO's, Designer's and Purchasing manager's duty to consider replacing the solution consisting of aluminium charge-air-cooler and stainless steel pre-cooler with one CuproBraze charge-air-cooler, when aiming for high return of investments from material and energy efficiency.

If You wish to discuss this or other advantages of CuproBraze technology during the fair, please, contact me at: juho.partanen (a) finnradiator.com See You in Munich!

PS. There will be interesting technical article on CuproBraze technology in Industrial Technology International, Bauma review.

January 28, 2010 - Good start for the year! - by Markku

A new year with new opportunities has started. We who live in the Nordic countries have experienced a real winter after so many years. We had a white Christmas and the snow is still on the ground and we got a lot more yesterday. Nice to have snow in the otherwise dark period of the year. As regards CuproBraze, Alliance and the member companies have received many enquiries and messages from people interested in the technology. That is encouraging when the economy is still down. We will do our best to support all viable projects by information and expertise. Alliance will have some interesting events this year. Keep on track on the "Upcoming Events" page on this web site. I wish all of you a good start for the year!