News

ERR - The International Oil Shale Symposium is taking place at Tallinn University of Technology from June 10-13, with around 400 experts mulling over the future of the industry.

Taking place for the fourth time in Estonia, the list of speakers includes Eesti Energia's CEO Sandor Liive, Minister of Economic Affairs Juhan Parts, the International Energy Agency's Didier Houssin and the World Energy Council's Leonhard Birnbaum.

Eesti Energia is hoping oil shale will become the next popular source of energy as the price of crude oil continues to grow.

Read more: http://news.err.ee/economy/8c572e8a-fc35-491c-a248-c38a95069ffa

ERR - The credit rating agency Fitch on Thursday reconfirmed Estonia's rating as A+, leaving the country's outlook at stable.

In a statement, the agency said that a key rating strength for the country was its "outstanding" public finances. "Although the general government balance swung into a small nominal deficit in 2012 (0.3 percent of GDP), Estonia has never fallen foul of the EU's Excessive Debt Procedure and the authorities are confident of maintaining structural surpluses over the medium term," it said.

It also praised the country's recovery from the economic crisis, noting that last year's 3.2 percent GDP growth was the fastest in the Eurozone, a distinction that Estonia has had for the second year running.

Read more: http://news.err.ee/economy/342a1b08-843d-4b1b-bd5d-4a3d88e00d4c

BNS - The cancer drug candidate Virexxa, a part of the product portfolio of the Competence Center for Cancer Research (CCCR), is going to be produced at the AS Kevelt company in Estonia the owners of which will upgrade the drug manufacturing unit for eight million euros.

Riin Ehin, manager of CCCR, said the international biological drugs and diagnostics company OPKO Health at the end of April invested 46 million euros in Pharmsynthez, parent company of the CCCR partner AS Kevelt. The owners invested additionally 20 million euros. Eight million euros will be spent for the upgrade of the drug manufacturing unit of AS Kevelt where drugs will start to be manufactured for the European and US market.

"The cooperation between Pharmsynthez and CCCR can be compared to Skype, as development operations and in the future also production will take place in Estonia. Estonia was chosen as location because of the strong cooperation between the public and private sector here in cancer research and drug development," Ehin said.

She said investors have voiced recognition of CCCR's effective and well structured functioning, good understanding of new paradigms in drug development, and the capability to bring a scientific invention to the point of innovation. AS Kevelt and CCCR are working together also on the development of another drug candidate, Oncohist, meant for the treatment of acute myeloid leucemia.

Virexxa is candidate for approval for the treatment of endometrial cancer, or malignancies that arise from the endometrium, or lining, of the uterus. There is no specific treatment now for the illness that is estimated to affect 25,000 patients in Europe annually. Trials of Virexxa have been very successful and the drug is seen to have a potential market of 600 million to one billion euros. Virexxa also has large potential in the US market.

Established in 2005, CCCR is a research and development institution certified by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research. Its portfolio includes 14 projects that are financed by Enterprise Estonia, the Archimedes foundation and CCCR's 14 partners. The latter include the Tallinn University of Technology, the North Estonia Medical Center, the University of Tartu, as well as biotechnology, drug development and organic synthesis businesses from Estonia, Sweden, the United States and Latvia.

ERR - As of next month, it will be possible to rent electric cars to allow a broader swath of the public to experience driving the vehicles, delivered to Estonia last year as part of a electromobility project.

The service will be available in Tallinn and Tartu by late June.

Electromobility program director Jarmo Tuisu said there will be 18 Nissan Leafs and six Mitsubishi iMiEVs available.

In Tallinn, the rental outlets will be in the Viru Keskus shopping center, bus station, Technopolis Ülemiste, Tammsaare Business Center and Tehnopol science park in Mustamäe. In Tartu, they will be located at the Ahhaa discovery center and the railway station.

Prospective users should first sign up online on the electromobility website, elmo.ee, and then order by any cell phone. There will be no keys exchanged. Users can either press a button if using a smartphone, or place a call using an ordinary phone. The cars can be dropped off at any outlet or at the charging stations within Tallinn or Tartu.

Read more: http://news.err.ee/sci-tech/f907b021-37e8-4f3d-b592-d4f4b48c9306

ERR - President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said in remarks at a prestigious Google conference that IT solutions helped make Estonia bigger than its geographic borders.

"The decisions adopted right after re-independence, such as computer studies in schools and providing free Internet connections in schools nationally along with functioning IT solutions and e-services have made Estonia greater than its geographic borders," Ilves said at  Zeitgeist 2013, held in Hertfordshire.

"We're a small country, but one with free high-speed Internet connections. Thanks to that, we see new opportunities and create innovative IT solutions, which are at once our greatest foreign aid article," said the president, according to uudised.err.ee.

The conversation with Ilves was moderated by Google Ideas founder and director Jared Cohen, who is one of the authors of "The New Digital Age."

Read more: http://news.err.ee/politics/6f35b665-cf98-4346-a708-087b57aad897

BNS - The Belgian company Katoen Natie opened a warehouse complex for handling of goods headed for Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in the port of Muuga just outside Tallinn on Friday.

The inauguration of the 25,000 square meter warehouse complex also marks the launch of the Muuga industrial park of Port of Tallinn, the Estonian state-owned port company.

The total cost of the project is 30 million euros and the logistics center will provide 60 jobs, Katoen Natie Eesti AS said.

"We are planning to expand the Muuga logistics center gradually: the warehouse area should double to 66,000 square meters by the end of 2015," Katoen Natie Eesti AS board chairman Mart Melles said.

Ain Kaljurand, CEO of Port of Tallinn, described Katoen Natie, one of the largest logistics companies in the world, as a quality stamp both for Estonia and Port of Tallinn. "For Muuga Harbor, the opening of the Katoen Natie logistics center means a huge step towards becoming a distribution hub on the Baltic Sea. Katoen Natie is the key client of the industrial park opened today, and its example will be followed by other logistics and production companies whose buildings will rise nearby in the nearest future," Kaljurand said.

The new logistics center will be used to transport a variety of groups of goods in the Baltic Sea region, of which cocoa products, consumer goods, plastic goods etc. are the most important. In addition to the indoor storage areas, the construction of a 600 square meter office building and a railway section nearly one kilometer long has been completed.

Katoen Natie has already started to build a second warehouse of 16,000 square meters, which will be completed this September. There are plans to build one more 25,000 square meter warehouse and 44 tanks for the handling of bulk plastic granules.

After the completion of the second and then the third phase in 2015, Katoen Natie's total warehouse capacity at Muuga will amount to 66,000 square meters, making it the largest logistics center in Estonia.

Katoen Natie owns 150 logistics centers all over the world and the total capacity of all the warehouses operated by it is more than five million square meters.

ERR - Estonian IT giant Nortal, formerly Webmedia, and the US company Fast Enterprise have won a 220-million-euro procurement to combine the Finnish Tax Administration's dozens of information systems into just one.

The initial project cost is 63 million euros, which will rise to a total of 226 million over the course of the 15-year undertaking, Nortal said on its website on Tuesday.

According to Äripäev, the project is the largest contract an Estonian IT company has won outside the nation.

Read more: http://news.err.ee/economy/2654cf4e-83fb-4838-a04c-ba9fde76aef5

ERR - Ahti Heinla, one of the original developers of Skype, along with a Tallinn-based team of programmers and engineers, is assembling four robots that should be able to collect rock samples on Mars or the Moon.

They are taking part in a NASA contest called "NASA Centennial Challenge: Sample Return Robot," which wraps up at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Boston in June, Eesti Ekspress reported. The contest has a 1.5-million-dollar award, but Heinla's team doesn't qualify for the prize, which is reserved for American innovators.

“There's no time. Every minutes counts," said Heinla, whose team began working at the end of last year. The project is 80 percent ready, he said.

Another 14 teams are participating in the contest, mostly from the US and Canada. Heinla's team is the only team from Europe.

Read more: http://news.err.ee/sci-tech/7a8346cb-7d30-40f0-a7a7-342d83a26ca5

ERR - According to a new index, devised by the US magazine Foreign Policy to measure investment attractiveness, Estonia ranks 12th in the world and first in Europe.

The Baseline Profitability Index takes into account asset growth, preservation of said assets and the ease of bringing home proceeds, the magazine said on its website Monday.

Estonia is the highest-ranked European country, at 22nd for asset growth, 28th for preservation of value and 44th in the repatriation of capital. The overall score of 1.1 ties Estonia for 12th with Sri Lanka.

Read more: http://news.err.ee/economy/69be8622-7a1d-4e7b-9938-34a0d0e6d955

ERR - Estonia's first satellite, ESTCube-1, was rocketed off to orbit the Earth on Tuesday at 05:06, after strong winds had caused setbacks, postponing the initial planned launch date on Saturday.

Estonia has thus become the 41st nation to have a manmade object in space, beating out Finland and the other Baltic countries, all of which are due to launch their first satellites in the coming years.

The nanosatellite reached orbit at around 07:06 Estonian time. Launched from the Guiana Space Center, ESTCube-1 was carried by the launch vehicle Vega and was accompanied by two other satellites, Europe's Proba V and Vietnam's VNREDSat 1A.

Read more: http://news.err.ee/sci-tech/169fb557-5a8d-4d6f-a589-4fb8178d6734