2 isle firms earn federal export awards

Two Honolulu-based companies will receive U.S. Department of Commerce Export Achievement Awards today at 11:30 a.m. at the East-West Center.

CBI Polymers LLC manufactures a military-grade, safe-to-handle and environmentally friendly product for extreme, hard-to-clean contamination remediation needs. The U.S. Commercial Service’s team in Honolulu and Hungary joined forces to help CBI close a sale to assist Hungary’s response to its recent chemical spill disaster. CBI also used the U.S. Commercial Service to assist with Japan’s earthquake and tsunami recovery efforts.

Sopogy Inc. pioneered a solar thermal technology called micro-scaled concentrating solar power. The U.S. Commercial Service in Hawaii and Thailand assisted Sopogy in facilitating the signing of a memorandum of understanding for a solar energy development project with a Thai partner.

Export Achievement Awards recognize U.S. companies that have benefited from export services of the International Trade Administration’s U.S. Commercial Service to make their first export sales or expand into new foreign markets.

Suresh Kumar, assistant secretary of commerce for trade promotion and director general of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service, and Hawaii Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz will present the awards.

Facebook fails to satisfy consumers

Facebook ranks low among social media websites when it comes to consumer satisfaction but remains the dominant platform for the majority of users, according to a recent report by the American Customer Satisfaction Index and ForeSee Results.

The ACSI, founded at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, draws on interviews with about 70,000 consumers annually to measure satisfaction with more than 225 companies in 47 industries.

The index focuses on e-business, which ForeSee Results divided into three categories: social media websites, search engines and portals, and news websites. Sixteen websites were evaluated, including Facebook, Wikipedia, Google and CNN.

According to the results, overall customer satisfaction with social media sites was unchanged from last year at an aggregate score of 70 out of 100. A number above 80 is considered excellent.

Facebook was the lowest-scoring social media site measured individually in the latest report, with a score of 66, up 2 points from 2010.