Israel, whose population of 7.8 million is similar in size to Switzerland’s, has about 60 companies traded on the Nasdaq, the most of any country outside the U.S. after China. The nation is also home to the largest number of startup companies per capita in the world.

By Tal Barak Harif – Jan 25, 2012, Bloomberg

BioLineRx Ltd. (.BLRXARB) surged in New York trading, widening the premium versus its Tel Aviv shares to a record, on bets the biopharmaceutical company will be acquired following its licensing agreement for a hepatitis C treatment.

BioLineRx’s American depositary receipts jumped 69 percent on the Nasdaq Stock Market yesterday, swelling the premium to the Israeli stock to 28 percent. The Tel Aviv shares soared 25 percent at 10:28 a.m. in Tel Aviv today. The Bloomberg Israel-US 25 Index (ISRA25BN) of the largest Israeli companies traded in New York rose 0.1 percent to 92.53. Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (CHKP) led gains after Topeka Capital Markets Inc. recommended buying shares of the maker of network security equipment.

BioLineRx’s agreement with French company Genoscience to develop and sell a hepatitis C pill treatment boosts the odds that the Jerusalem-based company will be bought, according to Morgan Joseph TriArtisan Group. Bristol-Myers (BMY) Squibb Co. and Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD) announced $13.3 billion of acquisitions in the past two months to buy developers of hepatitis treatments.

“The fact that BioLineRx now has a highly novel hepatitis C drug in its armory should make the company an appealing target for strategic partners,” Raghuram Selvaraju, a New York-based equity analyst at Morgan Joseph TriArtisan, said by e-mail yesterday. “The hepatitis C viral infection space is an area that has been particularly hot recently.”

The Bloomberg Israel-US 25 Index has gained 10 percent this year, outperforming the Nasdaq Composite Index’s (CCMP) 7 percent advance and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index’s 4.5 percent increase. A 14 percent jump in Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (TEVA), the world’s largest maker of generic drugs, has helped pushed the Israel-US 25 higher. The TA-25 stock index rose 0.3 percent to 1,126.06 today.

BioLineRx ‘Euphoria’

Bristol-Myers, a biopharmaceutical company based in New York, said on Jan. 7 it would pay about $2.5 billion in cash to buy Inhibitex Inc. (INHX), which is developing an oral drug called INX-189 for treating hepatitis C. Pharmasset Inc. (VRUS), based in Princeton, New Jersey, agreed to be acquired by Gilead Sciences for $10.8 billion in a deal announced on Nov. 21.

Gilead, the world’s largest maker of HIV drugs, offered the highest premium on record for a drug takeover of comparable size, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

As many as 170 million people worldwide carry the hepatitis C virus, a blood-borne disease that can lead to liver cirrhosis and cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The market for medicines to treat the disease is about $3 billion worldwide, said Andrew Berens, a senior health-care analyst with Bloomberg Industries.

“The euphoria you’re seeing is mostly related to the fact that the announcement makes the company an acquisition target,” Berens said in a phone interview from Skillman, New Jersey. “An oral drug is what everyone is trying to develop because the current injection treatments are toxic and cumbersome.”

Volumes Surge

BioLineRx’s ADRs rose to $5.55 yesterday after the shares in Tel Aviv climbed 37 percent to 1.65 shekels, or the equivalent of 44 cents. One ADR represents 10 shares. The Tel Aviv shares rose to 2.06 shekels, or 55 cents, today.

Phone messages and e-mails sent to Garth Russell, a spokesman for BioLineRx from an external public-relations company, seeking comments on a potential buyout weren’t returned.

Trading volumes on the stock soared yesterday, with more than 6 million BioLineRx ADRs exchanging hands, compared with an average of 7,000 trades a day, according to Bank of New York Mellon Corp.

The Israeli biopharmaceutical company, whose largest shareholder is Teva (BLRX), listed the ADRs on the Nasdaq Stock Market on July 25.

Israel, whose population of 7.8 million is similar in size to Switzerland’s, has about 60 companies traded on the Nasdaq, the most of any country outside the U.S. after China. The nation is also home to the largest number of startup companies per capita in the world.

Venture Capital

Israeli technology companies raised $2.14 billion in 2011, 70 percent more than in 2010, according to the IVC-KPMG Quarterly Survey e-mailed yesterday.

Check Point, the world’s second-largest maker of network security equipment, climbed 1.2 percent to $56.52 in New York, the highest closing price since Nov. 16.

Shares will probably gain 38 percent to $78 in the next 12 months, Frederick Ziegel, an analyst at Topeka Capital Markets, wrote in an e-mailed report yesterday where he rated the company a “buy” in initial coverage.

EZchip Semiconductor Ltd. (EZCH), a maker of network processors that counts U.S. Internet infrastructure company Juniper Networks Inc. (JNPR) as a customer, gained 3.5 percent to $34.02, swelling the premium versus its Tel Aviv shares to $1.48, the widest among the dually-listed companies. EZchip climbed 5.4 percent to 129.60 shekels, or $34.32, today.

Bottomed Out

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX), which investors use to track chip industry performance, added 0.4 percent yesterday, extending this year’s gain to 14 percent.

Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN), the world’s largest maker of analog chips, said on Jan. 24 that fourth-quarter sales and profit declined less than analysts had predicted, signaling to brokerage Benchmark Co. that the market for electronic components has bottomed out.

“The chipmakers group seems to be on an upper inflection point,” Gary Mobley, an analyst at Benchmark, said by phone from New York yesterday. “Companies are talking about an end of inventory depletion and see increases in bookings.”

Perrigo Co. (PRGO), the largest U.S. maker of generic over-the- counter drugs, fell 2.1 percent in the U.S. to $97.54 yesterday after its shares in Tel Aviv gained 0.3 percent to 373.50 shekels, or the equivalent of $98.65. The $1.11 discount was the biggest among dually-listed companies. The Tel Aviv shares dropped 0.8 percent to 370.50 shekels, or $98.12, today.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tal Barak Harif in New York at tbarak@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Emma O’Brien at eobrien6@bloomberg.net

Israeli company Better Place celebrates fourth anniversary, officially inaugurates its first fleet of electrical cars.

Elad Benari & Yoni Kempinski, January 23, 2012

The Israeli company Better Place on Sunday celebrated its fourth anniversary. The company marked this special occasion by officially inaugurating its first fleet of 100 electric cars. A convoy of 70 cars, driven by dozens of the company’s employees, took to the streets of Tel Aviv for their first rides.

The electric car developed by Better Place has no exhaust pipe and no gas cap, but rather a simple electric socket. It runs on a 450-lb. lithium-ion battery and can go as far as 140 miles before the battery needs to be swapped or recharged at the recharging stations. 200 such stations are expected to be available around the country in the future.

Better Place announced that the delivery process of the new cars will take place in stages and will progress as the infrastructure across the country is completed. The company expects that the deliveries to the general public will begin in the second quarter of 2012.

In 2010, Israel’s Ministry of Transportation gave Better Place a permit to import 13 Renault Fluence electric cars for testing. Israel has long been committed to electric cars, and has expressed hope that by the end of this year it will be the world’s first nation to host a national electric car network.

One of the innovations of the electric cars is that its motor is silent, eliminating the loud exhaust noises in regular cars.

“You hear a noise that lets you know the car is on,” Zohar Beit’or of Better Place told Arutz Sheva. “It’s exactly like the noise that an electric camera makes.”

“The car is so silent that you can actually speak quietly and have a nice conversation without the need to shout,” he said. “It really makes you relax.”

Beit’or noted that he was very excited about the official launch of the new cars, adding he has worked for three years on this project.

“When I started, we only had plans on PowerPoint and we shared many ideas on how this day would look,” he said. “And it’s happening now. For me, it’s a piece of history.”

The company’s Oren Kassif explained that while the Renault company makes the cars, the infrastructure is Israeli and developed by Better Place. This includes charging spots, battery swap stations, and the command and control software.

“This is the first time you can say, at a country-wide level, that you can drive an electric car anywhere in the country,” he said. “What we’ve shown today is that we can deliver the cars, we can sell them, we can have customers driving on the road anywhere they wish.”

He added, “It’s a very exciting day. For the past four years we’ve been developing the systems and the infrastructure, recruiting people and bringing in more investors and customers.”

www.israelnationalnews.com

There’s a good chance that Iran’s computer systems, the electricity in Indonesian PM’s office and the body armor protecting Saudi soldiers came from Israel.

By Shuki Sadeh

Haaretz, January 19, 2012

Motti (not his real name ), a businessman with connections in Arab countries, was stunned several months ago when representatives of a well-known Israeli food company asked him to check the possibility of exporting to Iran. They told him an Iranian company had approached them through contacts abroad.

Motti refused. He didn’t want to violate the embargo. But since then, he says, he’s discovered that quite a few local companies and businessmen trade indirectly with Israel’s number one enemy. So he wasn’t shocked by a Bloomberg News story three weeks ago about Allot Communications selling Internet surveillance and monitoring equipment to Iran over five years through a Danish distributor.

According to the article, Allot sent the equipment to Denmark where workers removed the labels and repackaged it to hide its Israeli origin. It was then passed along to an intermediary who sold it to Iran. Three former Allot employees told Bloomberg that the equipment’s Iranian destination was an open secret, but the company denied giving its approval or having any knowledge of its products winding up there.

"Trade with Iran is an ancient story," says Prof. Uri Bialer of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an expert in international relations who has researched ties between Israel and Iran. "Money has no smell. Iranians always try to do business, and there have always been Israelis with an eye for making money."

Nachum Shiloh, an expert on Iran and owner of GMI – Gulf Markets Intelligence – says that for some Iranian businessmen it makes sense to import from Israel. "Here we view Iran as the enemy, a demon," he explains, "but not every Iranian gets up every morning thinking of ways to destroy Israel. Iran has a large segment of businessmen who are not fanatics, people who want to make money and further their businesses – if they could only trade, even indirectly, with businesspeople and companies from Israel."

The Allot story is also surprising because over the past 30 years – since the Iranian Revolution and severing of ties with Israel – several trade scandals have provoked tremendous fallout, most recently an affair linked to the Ofer family’s businesses.

Sanctions threatened by Israel and the United States are also intended to deter companies from considering ties, even indirectly, with Iran. But in today’s reality, with crisis weighing on western markets, there are companies ogling the third world – with some finding markets in countries hostile to Israel. These countries also have many adoring fans of Israel’s technology and products but, because of political sensitivities, everything must be done on the QT. Stickers and packaging saying "Made in Israel" must be removed and a bill of lading must be produced from an intermediary country – Turkey or somewhere in Europe.

"It’s forbidden to talk about these things," says Dan Catarivas, director of the Foreign Trade and International Relations Division of the Manufacturers Association of Israel. "Israeli industrialists want to stay as far out of the spotlight as possible in this respect. Companies sometimes approach us asking how to obscure their product’s Israeli identity. We refer them to experts in this field – usually shipment, transport and logistics companies."

"Operating surreptitiously is inconvenient and involves hard work and investment, but sometimes there’s no choice," explains a senior official at a well-known Israeli high-tech company. "Our foreign competitors deal freely with Arab countries, so they can lower their prices in Europe – and this is really annoying. It’s worth entering these markets to narrow the gap even slightly."

Israeli business quietly thrives in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and in far-off countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, too. Company owners on both sides do all they can to avoid harmful publicity. Contacts are made at international conferences overseas, through European and U.S. companies familiar with both sides, and directly over the Internet.

"Technology, particularly the Internet, is making the world smaller," explains Eliran Malul at Arab Markets, which brokers deals in Arab countries. "Arab entrepreneurs are interested in Israeli technologies and search them out through the Internet and social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn."

Fuzzy rules

Israeli law bans trading with Lebanon, Syria and Iran, directly and indirectly. Some businesspeople complain that rules are too fuzzy, especially when it comes to products showing up in unwanted destinations. "Sometimes Israeli companies don’t know who they’re selling to," says a high-ranking source at the Manufacturers Association. "Let’s say you’re fighting for the business of a new international customer. What can you tell him as you close the deal?: ‘You won’t sell the product to Iran, right?’ Would it help? How would you know if he’s lying?"

Some people believe Israeli companies play dumb regarding the final destination of their products. A high-tech source claims many international technology companies, including Israel-based companies, use local and regional distributors to market their products in broadly defined territories. Iran, for example, is frequently included in the Europe/Middle East/Africa distribution territory, allowing them to turn a blind eye to the product’s final destination.

"Companies need to show growth and meet investors’ expectations, and managers want to continue receiving bonuses," says the Manufacturers Association source, adding that they don’t want to invest resources in investigating where their products end up.

Israel also uses businessmen and trade networks for political and commercial purposes. The state monitors activities of businessmen from Arab countries and enlists the help of Israeli businessmen in carrying out diplomatic missions and serving as intermediaries in clandestine intrigues. After it was revealed that ships belonging to the Ofer Group docked in Iran, foreign publications claimed the Ofer family’s ships had for years assisted Israeli agents in infiltrating Iran. Sources close to the Ofer family hinted in the media at the same time that the Ofer Group claimed it had long played a part in the country’s security.

Apart from this, throughout its existence Israel has used economic transactions for political ends. In the 1950s, for example, Israel secretly sold minerals from the Dead Sea Works to Romania – despite an embargo on communist bloc countries – to persuade Romanian authorities to let Jews there leave for Israel.

Until the rise of Islamic extremists in the late 1970s, Israel secretly bought oil from Iran – part of its tight relations with the Shah’s regime – despite Iran’s official participation in the Arab oil embargo on Israel.

Offices in Indonesia

Relations with Muslim countries extend far beyond the Middle East. In the late 1990s the Foreign Ministry tried establishing trade with Indonesia and Malaysia, Muslim countries with strong economic potential but without diplomatic relations with Israel. It was the heyday of the Oslo Accords and many believed Israel’s economic ties to Muslim and Arab countries would become much more open and productive. Several years earlier Koor Trade had opened an office in Indonesia and began establishing low-profile trading relations there.

"Indonesia and Malaysia were a big story and we dedicated huge efforts to developing economic relations with them," recalls Alon Liel, the Foreign Ministry’s director general at that time. "We reached all sorts of understandings on trade through a nearby embassy. We published a newspaper ad to interest Israeli businesspeople in investing there, but right afterward Indonesia and Malaysia abrogated all the understandings. The trade went underground. For the Foreign Ministry there was no point to it because it had no diplomatic value."

Trade continues covertly with Indonesia at the lowest possible profile and without diplomatic relations. Singapore serves as a base for businessmen trying to penetrate there. In 2007 a subsidiary of Ormat Industries signed a $200-million contract to supply electricity for 30 years. Ormat is part of a consortium on this project, with a Japanese bank providing most of the funding.

An Indonesia-Israel trade bureau was opened two years ago in a bid to make it easier for Israeli businesspeople to enter the country. Currently they can only get in by invitation from a local source sponsoring the visit. If none is available, the Israeli Embassy in Singapore assists by providing a local consultant who can serve as a sponsor in a pinch. Occasionally, however, the authorities turn down requests, depending on the country’s political mood.

Indonesia is one of the world’s fastest growing markets, with great potential in the field of communications because of its vast population – more than 200 million. Clandestine trade is also carried out in the opposite direction, according to Catarivas. Indonesian business delegations visit Israel, too, but this is kept from the general public. Israel imports eight times as much as it exports in its trade with Indonesia.

"This is an economic relationship with tremendous potential," says Emanuel Shahaf, chairman of the Israel-Indonesia Chamber of Commerce. "Businesspeople operating in Indonesia keep their cards close to their chests. Business is good and they don’t want to share it with anyone. The Indonesians also maintain secrecy because of the political sensitivity."

Shahaf says neighboring Malaysia also has great potential but there it’s even more difficult doing business. "They are more radical Muslims. While Indonesians shut their eyes occasionally, a Malaysian company needs a special permit from a government ministry to do business with an Israeli firm."

One of the most interesting countries for duality of relations with Israel, if not the entire Arab world, is Saudi Arabia. On the one hand it has produced some of the world’s most heinous terrorists, most notably Osama bin Laden. On the other hand the country is considered a relatively moderate Arab state – in 2002 it proposed the "Saudi initiative" for peace between Israel and the Arab countries, an initiative disregarded by Israel. Saudi Arabia is at odds with Iran and enjoys excellent diplomatic and economic relations with the United States.

Quite a number of Israeli companies export products to Saudi Arabia, including technological goods. This is sometimes done through their U.S.-registered subsidiaries, thanks to the strong relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Israeli companies, such as body armor manufacturer Rabintex Industries, have also provided equipment to U.S. forces stationed in Saudi Arabia. (Rabintex entered receivership last week.)

Another interesting field is trade in plastics. Israel receives raw materials for its plastics industry – polyethylene and polypropylene deriving from petroleum production – from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. These materials are sent in a roundabout way but Israeli authorities are aware of their source. Israel’s plastics industry, in turn, exports greenhouse sheeting, irrigation drippers, house and garden products, disposable utensils and food packaging to Saudi Arabia. Some of these products are made by Turkish factories established by Israeli companies.

According to Liel, who once served as Israel’s ambassador to Turkey, this inflates trade statistics with Turkey. "I assume the high trade figures with Turkey are biased to some degree because they include shipments to countries with which Israel has no relations."

Israeli guards in the Gulf

The wealthy Gulf countries are, without doubt, the most attractive places for Israeli business. As Dubai was building the Palm Islands – a megalomaniac real estate project delayed by the global economic crisis – Israelis had a hand in providing some of the shingles through an Italian roofing tile company.

A fair number of Israeli high-tech companies operate in the Gulf states. One field in which they are active is internal security, a particularly thriving activity before the assassination in Dubai of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh two years ago today. When the story broke there were media claims that photographic and security equipment used by Dubai police resembled Israeli technology. It was never confirmed that Mossad agents (according to foreign reports ) were caught through the use of Israeli technology, but it is known that quite a few companies in the Gulf states rely on sophisticated Israeli technology for security purposes. And not just technology – an Israeli-owned security firm protecting oil fields in one of the Gulf countries also brings in Israelis to guard them.

Israel also exports medical, agricultural and water technologies to the Gulf states. Trade depends on the regional political situation, like with the Mabhouh affair. "In such cases you simply keep your head down and wait until it all blows over," says Naava Mashiah, who lives in Geneva and brokers deals in the Middle East. "You need to be sensitive to the situation. You simply stop, not even sending emails, until the tide turns. Israelis have already gone back to doing business in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar."

Mashiah, who visits the Gulf twice a year, is part of a small group of Israelis who have turned the complicated occupation of business mediation between Israelis and Arabs into a livelihood. Some do it not just for the handsome financial reward but also in the belief that it could bring long-desired peace a step closer. Mashiah belongs to Israeli Peace Initiative, a movement formed by Idan Ofer whose membership, which includes prominent personalities in Israel’s business elite, wants to establish an alternative to the political deadlock in the region.

In dealings in Arab countries it’s impossible to separate the political and business aspects, says Mashiah. "The Saudi initiative didn’t get a response from Israel, and the Arab world sees this as an insult. The Israeli Peace Initiative, in a way, provides an answer to the standstill because it shows there are serious Israelis aware of the political situation and working to change it. Israel is becoming increasingly isolated in the world, and our group is trying to break this isolation. One way is by creating business ties with Arab countries."

A mysterious note slipped to the MK

Of the several scandals involving Israeli-Iranian trade with political and security overtones, the most momentous was the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s when Israel mediated the U.S. sale of weapons to Iran, transferring the proceeds to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels. One of the key figures tied to the affair was Amiram Nir, the first husband of socialite Judy Shalom Nir-Mozes and the prime minister’s adviser on terrorism at that time. He was killed in a mysterious plane crash in Mexico in 1988.

Businessman Nahum Manbar was at the center of another episode. Manbar, who traded with Iran for several years before being caught, was convicted in 1998 for selling it chemical weapons. Several months ago he was released from prison.

The most recent flap, dubbed Ofergate, broke out last May when the U.S. State Department disclosed that the Ofer Group had sold an oil tanker to Iran’s national shipping company in violation of international trade sanctions. The ship was reportedly sold by Tanker Pacific, an Ofer Holdings Group subsidiary, for about $8.5 million through a third party. The State Department consequently blacklisted the Ofer Group, impeding its U.S. business activities and ability to obtain credit from U.S. banks. It was revealed by TheMarker that Tanker Pacific ships had docked in Iranian ports on a number of occasions over the last decade.

A debate on the affair by the Knesset Economic Affairs Committee was abruptly cut short when a mysterious note was slipped to committee chairman Carmel Shama-Hacohen. The contents of the note have never been revealed. Several months later the U.S. announced it was removing the Ofer Group from the blacklist following discussions with group representatives. Tanker Pacific, however, was left on the list. Following that scandal the Finance Ministry is setting up an operations center to coordinate international economic sanctions.

This story is by: Shuki Sadeh, Haaretz

Alternative energy community amazed by Aidan Dwyer, 13, who came up with notion of arranging solar panels in shape of tree branches to maximize sunlight collection

Nimrod Avraham

Published:
01.16.12, 09:25 / Israel Environment

Aidan Dwyer, a 13-year-old boy from New York, has become the toast of the alternative energy community, after coming up with an inspirational way to enhance solar panels’ reception – arranging them in the shape of tree branches.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Dwyer came up with the idea of arranging solar panels in the shape of trees. After studying the mathematical relationship of the arrangement of leaves and branches on trees and the Fibonacci Sequence – which starts with the numbers 0 and 1, followed by the sum of the prior two numbers in the sequence – he realized that Fibonacci numbers can be found in many plants and flowers in nature. 

He then conducted several photovoltaic array experiments comparing his design to standard solar panel arrays, and found it was 20%-30% more efficient in collecting sunlight.

According to the report, the design “used the greatest number of PV panels within the least amount of physical space, making his concept a truly practical and efficient design.”

Innovation aside, Dwyer’s calculation were disproved after experts reviewed them more carefully and discovered he measured volts instead of the watts, but that has not stopped the alternative energy community from hailing his original thought process and experiments.

He was also awarded the 2011 Young Naturalist Award by the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and has filed a provisional patent application for his research on collecting solar energy.

Ancient Chinese medicine is known to ease pain and treat diseases, but Israeli researchers now think it can help barren women.

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, Arutz Sheva, January 16, 2012

Ancient Chinese medicine is known to ease pain, treat diseases and boost fertility for women who already have babies, but Israeli researchers at Tel Aviv University now think it can help women who have never conceived.

Traditional herbal preparations and acupuncture, remedies that the Western medical community calls by the acronym TCM, can be combined with intrauterine insemination (IUI) for women hoping to be mothers, according to Dr. Shahar Lev-Ari and Keren Sela.

Their research, published in the Journal of Integrative Medicine, shows a significant increase in fertility when the therapies are administered side-by-side.

When combining IUI with TCM treatments, 65.5 percent of the test group of 29 women were able to conceive, compared with 39.4 percent of the control group, who received no herbal or acupuncture therapy. About two-thirds of the women who conceived in each group ended up delivering healthy babies.

The method is as “close to nature” as possible and can be used by women employing sperm donors, or after a partner’s sperm is centrifuged to enhance its motility in the uterus.

Dr. Lev-Ari, a cellular biologist, and Sela, a TCM practitioner specializing in women’s health, followed the progress of 29 women between the ages of 30 and 45 who were receiving IUI treatment combined with TCM therapy, and compared their results to a control group of 94 women between the ages of 28 and 46 who were undergoing IUI treatment alone.

In addition to their IUI treatments, the 29 women in the first group received weekly sessions of acupuncture and a regime of Chinese medicines, which consisted of powdered or raw Chinese herbs such as Peonia Albae and Chuanxiong, designed to meet each woman’s specific needs. All herbal preparations were approved by the Israeli Health Ministry.

The vast difference in success rates is even more surprising when the age of the average participant was taken into account, Dr. Lev-Ari and Sela note. “The average age of the women in the study group was 39.4, while that of the control group was 37.1. Normally, the older the mother, the lower the pregnancy and delivery rates,” they explain.

www.israelnationalnews.com

Reprinted from WaterWorld

BE’ER SHEVA, ISRAEL, Jan. 10, 2012 – Israel still remains one the world leaders in wastewater recycling and a collaboration between local farmers has demonstrated why the country will continue to lead with this application.

A co-operation of 34 farming settlements recently pooled their resources together to construct an effluent reuse system next to a wastewater treatment plant. Previously, the quality of reclaimed water from the facility was not suitable for “unlimited irrigation” purposes.

A MODOtec filtration system, including downstream Ultraviolet Technology treatment, with a capacity of 60,000 m³/day, was selected. A total of 90% of the produced effluent will be piped for agricultural irrigation and the remaining 10% used for irrigation of Be’er Sheva’s municipal parks.

Wastewater effluent reuse is becoming a common strategy in the region, especially for agricultural irrigation purposes, which have exhausted many groundwater supplies in the region.

Since 2000, the use of treated wastewater for irrigation by Israel’s agricultural sector increased from 17% of water consumed by the sector to more than 50%. Regulation has been a key driver, with stringent regulations to upgrade effluent standards set in motion in 2000 by Israel’s parliament.

In January 2010, the government approved regulations that would upgrade the 1992 minimal standard of 20 ppm biological oxygen demand (BOD) and 30 ppm total suspended solids (TSS) to 10 ppm BOD and 10 ppm TSS.

Estimates from the World Bank show that currently more than 40 million m³ of municipal wastewater is recycled daily and is expected to increase to approximately 55 million m³ by 2015.

Growth is likely to be centred around the Middle East region, which lacks natural sustainable potable water supplies and relies upon desalination for its drinking water needs.

Oman is playing host to a large scale water reuse project that will see thousands of kilometers of pipeline laid to connect homes to a new network. Haya Water’s project aims to connect over 30,000 homes, office and commercial buildings to the water reuse network. This will be supplied by a 80,000 m³ capacity wastewater treatment plant, using Membrane Bioreactor technology (MBR).

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- WaterWorld Middle East conference and exhibition will be launching in Qatar on February 6-8 2012 and will include conference sessions on Water Reuse and the use of MBR technology. For more information please click here.

Latest Articles

Wastewater reuse relieves agricultural irrigation drought in Israel (Jan 10, 2012)

By Jonathan Ferziger and Gwen Ackerman – Bloomberg, Dec 29, 2011

The Google Inc. (GOOG) executive with his bright yellow vest was impossible to miss in the middle of the Israeli startup owners seeking cash in a rusty boathouse at Tel Aviv’s Jaffa port.

David Lawee, Google’s mergers and acquisitions chief, used the early November session, called Garage Geeks, to round out his contact list. “I’ve met about 100 Israeli companies in two days and that’s, like, super-efficient,” he said between conversations at the corporate speed-dating-style event arranged by startup investor Yossi Vardi that introduced local businesses to multinationals.

Google set up a funding program two weeks later for Israeli entrepreneurs, part of an acceleration in U.S. technology companies’ backing in late 2011 that has included Apple Inc. (AAPL) buying a company in the country for the first time, according to business newspaper Calcalist.

The foreign investments are important to Israel, where the high-tech industry accounts for 47 percent of manufactured exports, and could be a new source of innovation for giants like Google because of the Mountain View, California-based company’s strength in technology startups.

Money from Google and others is making up for a decline in local financing that Avi Sasson, Israel’s state research-grant provider, says could hurt industry growth.

Venture Capital Slump

“The minute the Israeli venture-capital funds aren’t helping in the early stage, there won’t be a new generation of companies for the foreign investors to invest in three or four years down the road,” said Koby Simana, head of the Israel Venture Capital Research Center, in an interview. “Israeli startups won’t exist if there is no Israeli venture capital.”

Of the $522 million raised by Israeli technology companies in the third quarter, $96 million came from domestic venture- capital funds, a drop of 40 percent from the second quarter and 12 percent from a year earlier, according to the research center. The proportion coming from Israel, at 18 percent, was the lowest since the center started covering the industry in 1999, Simana said.

Many Israeli venture capital funds, hurt by the global recession, have been unable to raise money, and 2012 will be “crucial” for their recovery, Simana said. “For some, it will be a make or break year because they haven’t raised funds since 2007 or 2006 and if they don’t raise any money this year or next, many will cease to operate,” he said.

State Funding

The Israeli government’s annual research-funding allocation has been cut by 1 billion shekels ($262 million) over the past decade, Sasson, who oversees the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s development financing for local companies, said this month at a conference in Tel Aviv. That represents a decrease of 56 percent to a yearly budget of about 800 million shekels.

Israel, with a population similar to Switzerland’s at 7.7 million people, was dubbed the “startup nation” in a 2009 book of that name by Saul Singer and Dan Senor. It has 64 companies on the Nasdaq (CCMP) Stock Market, the most of any country outside North America after China, with 56 percent focused on technology.

Google’s investments in fledgling Israeli companies in the past two years include takeovers (GOOG) of LabPixies, a developer of game applications, for $25 million, and Quiksee, which makes software for posting three-dimensional video online, for an undisclosed price. Other U.S. investors that have acquired Israeli assets include social-networking site Facebook Inc. and online marketplace EBay Inc. (EBAY)

Netanyahu on Twitter

Apple agreed to buy semiconductor designer Anobit Technologies Ltd., Calcalist reported Dec. 20. On the same day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office posted on its Twitter account a message congratulating Apple “on your first acquisition here,” without naming the target company. Mark Regev, a spokesman for Netanyahu, declined to elaborate.

Anobit, founded in 2006 and based in Herzliya Pituach, and investor Pitango Venture Capital declined to comment. Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Cupertino, California-based Apple, declined to comment on “rumor and speculation.”

International investments may not be the answer to the needs of Israel’s startups because the smaller number of local financiers poses a risk to the industry’s independence, said Abraham Peled, executive chairman of Staines, England-based digital-television coding developer NDS Group Plc.

“The minute Israeli high-tech is primarily based on development centers of major companies, their fortune will be tied to that of those companies so that, if they are cutting staff, they will cut in Israel as well,” Peled said.

‘Nimble’ Startups

Israel’s “nimble” startup model can still thrive even as government funds drop because Internet companies only need small amounts of money, Vardi said. The city of Tel Aviv recently opened a working space called the Library for young technology entrepreneurs, he said.

The hour-long Garage Geeks event closed the Tel Aviv part of Digital Life Design, an international technology industry convention held in Munich. The Israeli edition attracted 300 visitors from outside the country, Vardi said.

“Somehow the word is out that this is where everyone has to be,” said Vardi, co-chairman of the global conference and a founding investor in the former Mirabilis Ltd., which developed the ICQ online-chat system.

Top executives from Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), Paris- based Alcatel-Lucent and Russia’s Yandex NV were among nine potential benefactors at Garage Geeks who donned yellow vests. About 300 startup founders, clustering in groups as large as 30, roamed from suitor to suitor making appeals under loose rules that urged “short” presentations.

“When you make a connection with an entrepreneur who’s really excited, whether you do a deal with him or not, that’s kind of the juice of the job,” Google’s Lawee said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jonathan Ferziger in Tel Aviv jferziger@bloomberg.net; Gwen Ackerman in Jerusalem at gackerman@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kenneth Wong at kwong11@bloomberg.net; Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net.

®2011 BLOOMBERG L.P. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

by Brooke Crothers December 22, 2011 4:00 AM PST

The reported acquisition of Anobit should catapult Apple into the ranks of leading flash memory companies and mirrors what it has done with the A series of chips in its iPhone and iPad.

Apple is in the process of buying Anobit, an Israel-based flash memory firm, according to Israel’s Calcalist business news site. The purchase price isn’t small–in the range of $400 million to $500 million, according to reports.

So, what does a payout in that range bring to Apple? First of all, it’s important to understand that Apple is not a flash memory neophyte, according to Gregory Wong, president of Forward Insights, a flash memory market intelligence company.

“They already develop their own flash management tech,” he said. Anobit, therefore, strengthens Apple’s existing in-house flash memory expertise, according to Wong.

Anobit’s mobile storage.

(Credit: Anobit)

But engineering flash memory so it’s reliable is an enormous challenge. Just ask companies like Intel, Micron Technology, or SanDisk who have spent billions of dollars trying to make ever faster yet reliable flash memory and solid-state drives.

As NAND flash memory geometries get smaller and more bits are stored in each memory cell, the cells become more susceptible to electrical interference and disturbance, resulting in more data errors. Sometimes referred to “read and program disturb.”

Anobit has developed a memory signal processor, or MSP, that is able to manage very high bit error rates and extend the life of flash memory devices, according to Wong. (Spelled out in more detail here PDF).

This is a big issue in the flash memory business these days because it’s the difference between a high-quality, long-lasting solid-state drive and a mediocre one that may peter out prematurely.

And that is important to Apple since practically all of its marquee devices now use flash as the storage medium, not traditional rotating drives.

Add this burgeoning flash expertise to Apple’s formidable in-house system-on-a-chip know-how, as manifested in its A5 series of chips, and you have the makings of a chip design giant, albeit one deftly hidden inside of a device maker.

It wasn’t too long ago that Apple made similar acquisitions to establish itself as a leading designer of processors used in its iPhones and iPads. Past chip company purchases include Intrinsity and P.A. Semi.

Those have seemed to have worked. Apple’s dual-core A5 processor powers both the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S and is a big reason both devices have been well-received by consumers.

Updated at 6:50 a.m. PT with a clarification of a quote from Gregory Wong.

Originally posted at Nanotech – The Circuits Blog

Brooke Crothers

Brooke Crothers writes about small devices and the hardware inside. He has served as editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times’ Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.

IEI believes Israel may be sitting on vast reserves of shale oil, second only to those in the United States.

By Daniella Cheslow (AFP) – December 18, 2011

BEIT GUVRIN, Israel — Among the serene vineyards and pine trees of Israel’s wine-growing heartland, a towering drill is boring 600 metres (2,000 feet) underground, dredging up black rocks that smell like petrol.

This is oil shale, rocks saturated with kerogen, a material that turns into oil and gas under intense heat.

Huge deposits of this kerogen-rich rock lie deep underground in southern and central Israel in quantities which Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI) says could make the country an oil superpower and break its dependence on imports.

Shale oil production is often attacked for its high carbon footprint and for being prohibitively expensive, but the entrepreneurs at IEI insist they have found a cleaner, greener and cheaper method of extraction.

And they plan to prove it in the Ela Valley, a Biblical site in the Judaean hills some 30 kilometres (18 miles) southwest of Jerusalem where David is said to have battled Goliath.

But two years into a first round of experimental drilling, IEI faces a firestorm of criticism from environmentalists who say the project is a dangerous experiment in an ecological corridor that lies over the main source of Israel’s limited national water supply.

Oil shale exists in deposits around the world, including major sites in the United States, China, Estonia, Australia and Jordan. IEI believes Israel may be sitting on vast reserves of shale oil, second only to those in the United States.

If their estimates are right, shale oil could have a revolutionary impact on the Jewish state’s energy portfolio.

Israel currently consumes around 100 million barrels of oil a year, most of it imported from Russia and former Soviet states. It also relies on natural gas, around 60 percent of which comes from domestic sources while the rest is supplied by Egypt.

And while two major offshore gas finds have raised hopes that Israel could supply its own needs, the shale oil deposits could potentially dwarf these discoveries and provide for Israel’s energy needs many times over.

Scott Nguyen is vice-president of technology at IEI, a subsidiary of American telecoms giant IDT. A veteran of Dutch Shell Oil, he wears the tan leather boots and giant belt buckle of his native eastern Texas.

"Even in the early 1900s, people said oil shale will be the heir apparent to oil," Nguyen said. "The difficulty is implementing the technology to make it economic to do it."

The key to oil shale is kerogen, an organic material locked into rocks that, given a few aeons, would develop into petroleum. Production is expensive because it speeds up millions of years of geological processes.

While shale oil has been a known fuel source for centuries, it has always been more expensive and less convenient to produce than crude oil.

In Estonia, which produces 90 percent of its power from oil shale, production has declined as a result of cheaper alternatives and more stringent EU environmental penalties.

Extraction involves mining the rocks and heating them with large amounts of energy to convert the kerogen into oil and gas in a process which spews out pollution, litters the land with spent shale, consumes torrents of water and rips gaping scars in the landscape.

And burning it is four times as polluting as natural gas.

But Harold Vinegar, Nguyen’s boss and former chief scientist at Shell, has developed a new form of "in-situ" conversion, which converts the kerogen into shale oil underground, thereby cutting out the mining process.

His method involves drilling 200 metres into the deposit, inserting heating elements, then ratcheting up the temperature to 300 degrees Celsius (572 degrees F) for at least three years. At that heat, the rocks release the kerogen and it can be pumped up in liquid form.

But first, the extraction process, which has been under development since the 1980s, must be shown to work.

To date, IEI has carried out only small-scale field studies of the conversion technology, and should it get the necessary licence to run a full pilot in Israel, it will be the first proper commercial-scale trial of the process.

"If we are successful in implementing our in-situ conversion technology in Israel, it will make it easy to do it around the world," Nguyen said.

For years, the main way of extracting shale oil was through open-pit mining, a dirty process which which is very expensive, with production costs of around $70-$100 per barrel.

But using its technology, Nguyen says the barrel production cost would be $30-40.

And he says the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by extraction would "be lower than the emissions from the mix of comparable oil supplies once we reach the commercial phase."

The firm sees the process of sequestering part of the carbon dioxide emissions as "economical and technically favourable," he says.

No one knows how much oil is trapped in the rocks in Israel.

Vinegar believes there could be up to 250 billion barrels of oil, a figure far higher than that published by the London-based World Energy Council which in November 2010 put the figure at closer to four billion barrels.

Whatever the size of the resource, it is substantial. To date, IEI has invested about $20 million in the appraisal phase, and plans to invest up to $30 million more to design the pilot, which in its next stage involves oil shale exploration.

Nguyen says IEI has carried out some field experiments in Canada, but Israel is the first commercial site.

"There is no prior experience in the world (for in-situ conversion), and therefore this is exactly the time to do it," said Moshe Shirav, a researcher at the Israeli Geological Survey.

Shirav says IEI will keep a close eye on the environmental impact of the process through monitoring wells dug alongside the oil shale drill shafts.

But Akiva Flexer, a geology expert at Tel Aviv University, is concerned about the possible impact on the Mountain Aquifer, Israel’s main source of drinking water which lies just 200 metres below the shale oil deposits.

"It’s Israel’s most important aquifer," Flexer said. "If you have some dry crack, and there’s a certain leak it is enough that one drop of oil gets in and you can’t drink the water."

But Nguyen says a leak would be out of the question because an impermeable layer of clay separates the shale from the aquifer.

"In the pilot, we will have ground water monitoring wells where water can flow above and below the pilot areas," he said.

"If there is contamination in the water, we will stop heating and treat the contamination by removing and diluting it."

IEI, he says, will fully restore the land where they extract and produce shale oil, and the company is working with environmentalists to ensure their concerns are addressed.

But they have not managed to convince a local activist group called "Save Adullam" which fears the project may do irreversible damage to the aquifer which supplies both Israel and the Palestinians.

"I don’t want to risk the safety of the Israeli and Palestinian water supply on the ‘hope’ that everything will be OK," said spokeswoman Rachel Jacobson.

According to Israel’s infrastructure ministry, IEI was granted a licence to appraise the area for oil production from shale with the aim of "testing the method and its impacts from every angle, including, of course, the environmental impact."

So far, however, no environmental impact statement has been prepared, prompting Save Adullam and the Israeli Union for Environmental Defence (IUED) to petition the high court last year for a stop-work injunction.

But the court rejected their argument, saying the exploration fell under Israel’s 1952 Petroleum Act which grants energy explorers a free hand to search for oil and gas with minimal government interference.

For now, IEI has drilled into five sites, searching for the best place to start a full-scale pilot, with oil production set to begin as early as 2013.

By 2020, IEI expects to be extracting some 50,000 barrels per day (bpd), representing about a sixth of Israel’s daily oil imports, which in 2009 stood at 282,200 bpd, Nguyen says.

Mikhal Harm, secretary general of the Estonian branch of the World Energy Council, said that even Estonia, a leading producer of shale oil, had yet to solve the problem of carbon dioxide emissions.

He also said that in-situ conversion has not yet been proven commercially feasible anywhere in the world.

But he believes the shale oil deposits will end up benefiting Israel.

"The fact is that people need energy, and in the near future oil shale will be a big part of the energy portfolio," he told AFP.

"I don?t think people should be afraid of oil shale in Israel. They should welcome it, but with strict enough rules."

Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved.

Ministry of Environmental Protection

http://www.environment.gov.il

Updated: 12/07/2011

In November 2011, the Ministry of Environmental Protection granted 250 million shekels to private entrepreneurs and local authorities for promoting the construction of twenty facilities for the treatment of organic waste and transfer stations for sorting throughout the country. These facilities are a vital and complementing link in the implementation of the separation of waste at source program which has been introduced in Israel.

In total, some 600 million shekels (about $165 million) will be invested in the construction of recycling and waste to energy facilities over the next three years (40% by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and 60% by entrepreneurs/local authorities). The facilities will treat some 8,000 tons of waste per day, about two-thirds of the daily quantity of municipal waste which is generated in Israel.

The facilities include two phases of waste treatment:

• Sorting of the waste into its different components in transfer stations, with recyclables going to material recovery facilities. This will increase the quantity of recycled materials and significantly decrease the quantity of landfilled waste.
• Treatment of the organic fraction of the waste (such as food remnants), constituting some 40 percent of the municipal waste, and its transfer to:

1. Compost facilities where the waste will be transformed into fertilizer for agriculture.
2. Anaerobic digestion facilities where the biodegradable waste will be fermented to produce biogas for the generation of electricity. The electricity produced in these facilities will be sold to the electricity grid under preferential tariffs.

The new facilities will provide for the treatment of the waste which is separated within the framework of the separation of waste into two streams project, which is spearheaded by the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Some 31 local authorities have already joined the project and have received some 350 million shekels of aid for financing a municipal infrastructure which will make two dumpsters available for every resident, in his home and in the street.

The material recovery facilities and transfer stations will receive the waste, sort it and provide for its recycling, thereby saving some 900 million shekels worth of raw materials which were previously landfilled every year.

Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan: "The world already understands that waste is a raw material in and of itself. Investing in an industry which will implement the recycling revolution and will transform waste from nuisance to resource is an economic and environmental interest. Establishing a recycling and waste to energy market will prevent unnecessary exploitation of natural resources and raw materials, thereby significantly reducing the economic costs and environmental degradation that are finally borne by the consumer."

Separation of Waste at Source: Facts and Figures

• Some 12,000 – 14,000 tons of mixed waste which originate in local authorities are generated in Israel every day, totaling some 4.4 million tons per year.
• According to forecasts of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the annual quantity of waste increases by 3%-5% every year.
• The quantity of organic waste produced in Israel is estimated at a million and a half tons per year, constituting some 40% of the weight of solid waste in Israel and 10% of its volume. Most of this waste originates in food products, fruits and vegetables, etc.
• According to the estimates of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, some 4,600 tons of municipal organic waste are generated in Israel every day. This waste has a high potential for the production of biogas in renewable energy facilities and for the creation of compost for soil improvement.

The advantages of a separation of waste into at least two streams program include environmental advantages due to the prevention of pollution, the decrease in the quantity of landfilled waste and the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. These environmental advantages are complemented by economic benefits due to the creation of new jobs in the recycling market, savings in resources and reduced costs associated with landfilling.

More Links:

Recycling

Separation of Waste at Source