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Global Times: China’s environmental protection efforts benefit whole Asia region

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BEIJING, Nov. 19, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — China’s continuous improvement of air quality and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has benefited not only the country itself, but also the rest of Asia and the world, foreign scholars said Monday at an event held in Beijing, calling for more success stories like “China Blue” to spread across the Asian region and help countries reduce air pollution.  

Representatives from authorities and research institutions from China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Mongolia, the Philippines, totaling nearly 50 participants, attended the event.

At the opening ceremony of the Asian Regional Exchange for Clean Air held in Beijing on Monday, Lei Yu, director of Atmospheric Environmental Planning Institute, Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, said that since the implementation of the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan in 2013, China has implemented a series of measures, including adjustments to the energy structure, industrial restructuring, and major emission reduction projects. These efforts have led to significant progress and notable achievements in air pollution prevention and control.

“Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei is renowned for turning smog into blue skies, much like what we are seeing today on such a beautiful autumn day,” Glynda Bathan-Baterina, deputy executive director of Clean Air Asia, an international NGO, said at the event, hailing China’s impressive results in this regard.

The deputy executive director noted that China has achieved 40 percent reduction of PM2.5 in merely seven years, a similar feat accomplished by the US in three decades.

“We need more success stories across Asia like this and having those spread throughout the region,” Glynda said.

Gantuya Ganbat, a professor of Environmental Engineering at the German-Mongolian Institute for Resources and Technology, told the Global Times that Mongolia, particularly its capital Ulaanbaatar, is facing severe air pollution challenges due to the burning of fossil fuels, especially in winter. Insufficient financial resources, a shortage of skilled professionals, policy instability, as well as a lack of technological advancements are the major causes for the problem.

“Mongolia has a lot to learn from China’s experience and expertise in environmental planning,” Ganbat said. For example, Mongolia could learn how China’s specialized institutions, such as the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning, operate, the processes they use to develop strategies, and how they approach issues like air pollution and carbon neutrality.

Sharing China’s experiences and methodologies could not only support Mongolia, but also provide valuable insights for other countries, fostering broader regional cooperation, Ganbat told the Global Times.

Ririn Radiawati Kusuma, Indonesia director of Clean Air Asia, told the Global Times that in Indonesia, the main challenges regarding air pollution are the lack of government commitment and weak law enforcement.

China can coordinate with Indonesia to address these issues in several ways, Kusuma said. First, regional exchanges are essential for facilitating knowledge sharing between local and national governments. Second, partnerships with Chinese entities, including universities and institutions, can facilitate the R&D of environmental programs. Furthermore, Chinese green investments such as electric vehicle manufacturers in Indonesia can accelerate its effort to combat air pollution in the country.

A report was also released at Monday’s seminar as part of the “China Air” report series. The report said that as many Asian developing countries are still in the midst of rapid urbanization and industrialization, they are facing grave challenges in air pollution control and greenhouse gas emission reduction. Being the largest economy in Asia, China’s continuous improvement of air quality and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has benefited not only the country itself, but also the rest of the region and the world.

In 2023, countries in East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia have shown great economic growth momentum, but this has also been accompanied by increased energy consumption and emission intensity. Countries in South Asia face more severe air pollution challenges, as PM 2.5 exposure concentration in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan have nearly doubled the global average.

China, undergoing green transition, has shown a new development trend after encountering the situations seen in other countries, the report reads. As China’s GDP per capita exceeded the $10,000 mark and crossed the inflection point, the relationship between the country’s economic development and environmental quality improvement have turned from being “a compromise” to a “win-win situation,” according to the report. 

According to the latest data released by the MEE, in the first three quarters this year, the percentage of days with good or excellent air quality across 339 Chinese cities at the prefecture level and above reached 85.8 percent, an increase of 1.6 percentage points year-on-year. The average concentrations of PM 2.5, PM 10, ozone, and nitrogen dioxide were 27, 47, 147, and 18 micrograms per cubic meter, respectively, representing year-on-year reductions of 3.6 percent, 7.8 percent, 0.7 percent, and 10 percent.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-times-chinas-environmental-protection-efforts-benefit-whole-asia-region-302309468.html

SOURCE Global Times

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Chef Robotics Physical AI Models Can Now Automate Baked Goods Packing

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58 minutes ago

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April 29, 2026

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SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Chef Robotics, a leader in physical AI for the food industry, today announced that Chef robots can now automate tray assembly for baked goods packing. The application places baked products, such as burger buns, chocolate chip cookies, biscotti, butter cookies, biscuits, fortune cookies, granola bars, rusks, and shortbreads into trays and packaging containers before sealing.

Watch Chef robots in action.

Baked goods packing has historically been difficult to automate for high-mix production. Each item behaves differently on the production line—a granola bar compresses under the wrong grip, while a biscotti or rusk can crack if placed at the wrong angle. Surface textures range from glazed and smooth to crumbly and irregular, and strict presentation requirements leave little room for error. This variability has made it challenging for automation systems to reliably handle baked goods at production speeds, leaving food manufacturers dependent on manual labor and traditional bakery equipment.

To address this, Chef built its baked goods packing application on its existing piece-picking capability, which uses Chef’s AI-powered computer vision and physical AI models trained across diverse real-world production environments. This allows Chef robots to assess each item’s position, shape, and orientation in real time and determine how to pick the items from the pan and place them quickly and precisely without damaging them.

The baked goods packing application supports four distinct placement capabilities.

First, Chef’s vision system detects the angle at which each item sits in the pan and reorients it after picking, placing it on the tray at the exact angle required, regardless of its original position, enabling retail-ready presentation for SKUs that require precise angular placement.

Second, Chef robots can place multiple baked goods into the same packaging container in a single automated pass, completing full tray assembly without manual intervention.

Third, for packaging containers with multiple small compartments, Chef robots can precisely place items into each designated section, including multiple items in the same compartment, using Chef’s AI vision model to detect compartment positions and orientations in real time.

Fourth, Chef’s vision system identifies the exact center of each tray and places every item at a predefined offset from that center, ensuring a uniform, consistent arrangement across every pack regardless of how trays arrive on the conveyor.

For food manufacturers evaluating bakery systems and baked goods packaging automation, the application offers higher throughput, reduced labor dependency, and consistent presentation across shifts. The capability runs on Chef’s existing robotic hardware and software, allowing manufacturers to deploy it without requiring any changes to their production lines.

Chef’s baked goods packing application is available in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the UK and is included as part of Chef’s robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) pricing model.

About Chef Robotics
Chef is the first company to have commercialized a scalable AI-driven food robotics solution. With over 104 million servings made in production, Chef leverages ChefOS, an AI platform for food manipulation, to offer a Robotics-as-a-Service solution that helps industry-leading food companies increase production volume and meet demand. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Chef aims to empower humans to do what humans do best by accelerating the advent of intelligent machines. Visit https://chefrobotics.ai to learn more.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chef-robotics-physical-ai-models-can-now-automate-baked-goods-packing-302756923.html

SOURCE Chef Robotics

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Chef Robotics Physical AI Models Can Now Automate Baked Goods Packing

Published

58 minutes ago

on

April 29, 2026

By

SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Chef Robotics, a leader in physical AI for the food industry, today announced that Chef robots can now automate tray assembly for baked goods packing. The application places baked products, such as burger buns, chocolate chip cookies, biscotti, butter cookies, biscuits, fortune cookies, granola bars, rusks, and shortbreads into trays and packaging containers before sealing.

Watch Chef robots in action.

Baked goods packing has historically been difficult to automate for high-mix production. Each item behaves differently on the production line—a granola bar compresses under the wrong grip, while a biscotti or rusk can crack if placed at the wrong angle. Surface textures range from glazed and smooth to crumbly and irregular, and strict presentation requirements leave little room for error. This variability has made it challenging for automation systems to reliably handle baked goods at production speeds, leaving food manufacturers dependent on manual labor and traditional bakery equipment.

To address this, Chef built its baked goods packing application on its existing piece-picking capability, which uses Chef’s AI-powered computer vision and physical AI models trained across diverse real-world production environments. This allows Chef robots to assess each item’s position, shape, and orientation in real time and determine how to pick the items from the pan and place them quickly and precisely without damaging them.

The baked goods packing application supports four distinct placement capabilities.

First, Chef’s vision system detects the angle at which each item sits in the pan and reorients it after picking, placing it on the tray at the exact angle required, regardless of its original position, enabling retail-ready presentation for SKUs that require precise angular placement.

Second, Chef robots can place multiple baked goods into the same packaging container in a single automated pass, completing full tray assembly without manual intervention.

Third, for packaging containers with multiple small compartments, Chef robots can precisely place items into each designated section, including multiple items in the same compartment, using Chef’s AI vision model to detect compartment positions and orientations in real time.

Fourth, Chef’s vision system identifies the exact center of each tray and places every item at a predefined offset from that center, ensuring a uniform, consistent arrangement across every pack regardless of how trays arrive on the conveyor.

For food manufacturers evaluating bakery systems and baked goods packaging automation, the application offers higher throughput, reduced labor dependency, and consistent presentation across shifts. The capability runs on Chef’s existing robotic hardware and software, allowing manufacturers to deploy it without requiring any changes to their production lines.

Chef’s baked goods packing application is available in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the UK and is included as part of Chef’s robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) pricing model.

About Chef Robotics
Chef is the first company to have commercialized a scalable AI-driven food robotics solution. With over 104 million servings made in production, Chef leverages ChefOS, an AI platform for food manipulation, to offer a Robotics-as-a-Service solution that helps industry-leading food companies increase production volume and meet demand. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Chef aims to empower humans to do what humans do best by accelerating the advent of intelligent machines. Visit https://chefrobotics.ai to learn more.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chef-robotics-physical-ai-models-can-now-automate-baked-goods-packing-302756923.html

SOURCE Chef Robotics

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Air Products to Expand Industrial Gas Supply for Samsung Electronics’ Next-Generation Semiconductor Fab in South Korea

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58 minutes ago

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April 29, 2026

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New investment underscores the company’s long-term commitment to Korea and its leading role in the global semiconductor industry 

LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa., April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Air Products (NYSE:APD), a world-leading industrial gases company and serving Samsung globally, today announced it has been selected by Samsung to supply industrial gases for its new advanced semiconductor fab in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea.

Under the agreement, Air Products will build, own and operate multiple state-of-the-art production facilities and a bulk specialty gas supply system to supply nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and hydrogen for Samsung’s new semiconductor fab. The new facilities are expected to come onstream in multiple phases from 2028 through 2030.

Air Products has a long track record of executing multiple phase expansions in Pyeongtaek to support Samsung’s growing manufacturing needs. This latest project represents Air Products’ largest investment to date in the semiconductor industry and will establish Pyeongtaek as the company’s single largest operations site globally supporting the electronics industry. 

“Air Products is honored to be selected once again by Samsung and to have their continued confidence as a trusted partner supporting their strategic growth plans,” said SR Kim, President, Air Products Korea. “This significant investment reinforces Air Products’ role as a leading global supplier to the semiconductor industry and underscores our long-standing commitment to supporting our strategic customers with safety, reliability, efficiency and excellent service.”

Air Products has served the global electronics industry for more than 40 years, supplying industrial gases safely and reliably to many of the world’s leading technology companies. The company has operated in Korea for more than 50 years and has established a strong position in electronics and manufacturing sectors.

About Air Products

Air Products (NYSE: APD) is a world-leading industrial gases company in operation for over 85 years focused on serving energy, environmental, and emerging markets and generating a cleaner future. The Company supplies essential industrial gases, related equipment and applications expertise to customers in dozens of industries, including refining, chemicals, metals, electronics, manufacturing, medical and food. As the leading global supplier of hydrogen, Air Products also develops, engineers, builds, owns and operates some of the world’s largest clean hydrogen projects, supporting the transition to low- and zero-carbon energy in the industrial and heavy-duty transportation sectors. Through its sale of equipment businesses, the Company also provides turbomachinery, membrane systems and cryogenic containers globally.

Air Products had fiscal 2025 sales of $12 billion from operations in approximately 50 countries. For more information, visit airproducts.com or follow us on LinkedIn, X, Facebook or Instagram.

This release contains “forward-looking statements” within the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on management’s expectations and assumptions as of the date of this release and are not guarantees of future performance. While forward-looking statements are made in good faith and based on assumptions, expectations and projections that management believes are reasonable based on currently available information, actual performance and financial results may differ materially from projections and estimates expressed in the forward-looking statements because of many factors, including the risk factors described in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2025 and other factors disclosed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, we disclaim any obligation or undertaking to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in the assumptions, beliefs or expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances upon which any such forward-looking statements are based.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/air-products-to-expand-industrial-gas-supply-for-samsung-electronics-next-generation-semiconductor-fab-in-south-korea-302757497.html

SOURCE Air Products

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