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B.C.-based Carbon Engineering Ltd. has secured multimillion-dollar investments from Air Canada AC-T and aircraft manufacturer Airbus SE to scale up and improve its technology for extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, the latest in a series of funding announcements from big-name backers. Carbon Engineering said the funding will go to research and development at its innovation centre in Squamish, B.C. The work there is aimed at improving the efficiency and reducing costs of the direct-air capture technology, one of a number of methods being used around the world to remove greenhouse gas emissions in the fight against climate change. “By providing the funding, they’re allowing us to go faster. We have an ambitious program and it requires lots of labour and equipment,” Daniel Friedmann, chief executive officer of Carbon Engineering, said in an interview. “The more funding we have to move things forward, the more things we can do in parallel.” Air Canada contributed $6.75-million in an equi...

Foxconn’s flagship iPhone plant in China is set to see a further reduction in November shipments after the latest bout of worker unrest this week, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said on Friday, as thousands of employees quit. The world’s largest Apple AAPL-Q iPhone factory has been grappling with strict COVID-19 restrictions that have fuelled discontent among workers and disrupted production ahead of Christmas and January’s Lunar New Year holiday, as many workers were either put into isolation or fled the plant. Following Wednesday’s escalation that saw workers clash with security personnel, Foxconn could now see more than 30 per cent of the site’s November production affected, up from an internal estimate of up to 30 per cent when the labour issues erupted in late October, the source said. The factory is the only one that makes premium iPhone models, including the iPhone 14 Pro, and the source said it is unlikely to resume full production by the end of this month. Foxc...

Shares of Apple Inc AAPL-Q fell about 2 per cent on Monday as growing unrest at a key Chinese plant fanned worries of a bigger hit to the already constrained production of higher-end iPhone 14 models. Reuters reported on Friday that the Foxconn-operated plant, which is the world’s biggest iPhone factory, could see a further drop in November shipments due to worker unrest and rising COVID-19 cases in the country. Separately, Bloomberg News reported citing a source earlier in the day that there could be a shortfall of 6 million iPhone Pro units this year due to production-related problems. “The ongoing challenges around delays in returning to a normal level of production at the Zhengzhou facility could limit the pace with which supply-demand equilibrium can be reached in the coming months,” J.P. Morgan analysts said. They added that lead times for Pro models have moderated except in China where the timeline remains elevated. Customers in the United States wait for about 33 days for the...

Analysts at Piper Sandler on Thursday cut their revenue and iPhone sales estimates for Apple Inc’s AAPL-Q December quarter, as Beijing’s strict lockdowns crimp production at the world’s biggest iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, China. The brokerage now expects $119-billon in revenue for the current quarter from an earlier projection of $127.3-billion, with iPhone unit sales of about 74 million against 83 million previously expected. “More than 50 per cent of assembled iPhones come from Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant. Majority of the disruptions took place in the month of November where utilization for the plant may have fallen to 50 per cent or below,” the analysts said. China’s manufacturing and services activities shrank further in November to seven-month lows, official data showed, stung by the country’s zero-COVID policy and rising infections that analysts said will hurt the economy well into 2023. Production woes for Apple were heightened by a rare example of large-scale labour unrest in ...

Pfizer Inc PFE-N is investing more than $2.5 billion at its drug making plants in Belgium and Ireland, gearing up to launch new products it hopes can replace lost revenue as patents expire and COVID-19 vaccine sales decline. The drugmaker said on Friday it plans to spend more than 1.2 billion euros ($1.26 billion) to expand its Puurs, Belgium, manufacturing site, matching the investment at its Dublin, Ireland, plant announced on Thursday. In Belgium, some projects related to the investment announced on Friday are already underway, with others planned to begin early next year, Pfizer said in a press release. At the plant in Ireland, expansion is expected to begin in 2024 and to be completed in 2027, the company said. The Puurs site has played a key role in the production of COVID-19 vaccine shots Pfizer developed with its German partner BioNTech using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology. Output started there in late 2020 when Europe and the United States began rolling out shots to tackle ...

Freeport LNG on Friday again delayed the restart of the second-biggest U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility, moving its forecast for resuming processing to year’s end, pending regulatory approval. Freeport shut down the Texas plant on June 8 after an explosion energy consultants said was the result of inadequate operating and testing procedures, error and fatigue. Last month, the closely-held company said it was on track to restart the plant in mid December and would get most of its 15 million tonnes per annum production back by January with a return to full service in March. “Based upon current progress, and subject to us continuing to meet necessary regulatory requirements, we now anticipate that the restart of our liquefaction facility to be achieved around year end,” Freeport LNG spokesperson Heather Browne told Reuters in an e-mail. A delayed restart of the plant would leave less fuel for European countries seeking to replace Russian gas. Russia has slashed exports t...

Tesla TSLA-Q plans to run a reduced production schedule at its Shanghai plant in January, extending the reduced output it began this month into next year, according to an internal schedule reviewed by Reuters. Tesla will run production for 17 days in January between Jan. 3 to Jan. 19 and will stop electric vehicle output from Jan. 20 to Jan. 31 for an extended break for Chinese New Year, according to the plan seen by Reuters. Tesla did not specify a reason for the production slowdown in its output plan. It was also not clear whether work would continue outside the assembly lines for the Model 3 and Model Y at the plant during the scheduled downtime. It has not been established practice for Tesla to shut down operations for an extended period for Chinese New Year. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters. Tesla suspended production at its Shanghai plant on Saturday, pulling forward an established plan to pause most work at the plant in the last week of D...

The United States Congress’s adoption last year of the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, dramatically ratcheted up electric vehicle incentives. REBECCA COOK/Reuters U.S. climate envoy John Kerry does not have much sympathy for other countries complaining about the massive subsidies President Joe Biden’s administration is offering to electric-vehicle and battery-component makers, as Washington seeks to break China’s dominance of the global EV supply chain. “The reaction shouldn’t be ‘Oh my God, you shouldn’t be doing that, you’re putting us in an unfair position,’” Mr. Kerry said last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Do it! Everybody’s got to do the same thing to accelerate this process even more.” His comments served as a warning to European and Canadian policy makers scrambling to keep up after Congress’s adoption last year of the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, dramatically ratcheted up EV incentives. The U.S.-led subsidy war leaves other countries with the...