Calhoun paper mill adds tissue production
Resolute Forest Products plans to invest $270 million in a major expansion that will add 105 more workers at its Calhoun, Tennessee mill.
For the first time in the plant's 61 years, and in company history, Resolute will make a product - tissue for paper towels and toilet paper - that will go directly to the consumer market.
"This is a big day for Resolute. It's a big day for the mill," says Richard Garneau, chief executive of the Montreal-based company whose local plant was known for many years as Bowater.
Garneau said the expansion will make, box and package the tissue products for private label retailers. Companies such as Wal-Mart and CVS, for example, each have their own specifications for such products, he said.
The Resolute plant will employ 655 workers when the expansion is complete in early 2017, officials said.
Kimball campus to expand mechatronics program
The state of Tennessee is pumping $300,000 into the Tennessee Center for Applied Technology at Chattanooga State Community College to help train workers for Volkswagen and the region's other advanced manufacturers.
The money will buy equipment for the mechatronics program at the Kimball campus of Chattanooga State, which teaches workers how to operate and fix mechanical and electronic controls.
"We're responding to [VW's] desires and others," Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam says.
Marion County Mayor David Jackson said the Kimball campus is planning to grow its presence by raising a new $2.1 million structure. "We hope in a year to a year-and-a-half to be ready," he says about the 17,000-square-foot facility.
Mohawk, Shaw cut staple yarn production
The improving economy is helping carpet sales rebound. But the biggest carpet producers are still cutting operations at some of their older plants that produce tuft stapled yarn.
Mohawk Industries will close its yarn plant in Chatsworth, Georgia in August and move 156 workers to other Northwest Georgia facilities. Shaw Industries is laying off 160 workers in Valley Head, Alabama.
Both Mohawk and Shaw are moving away from staled yarn in favor of the bulk continuous filament process, which is more automated.
Joey Faircloth, Mohawk's senior vice president of manufacturing and operations, said his company will transfer workers to plants that have been significantly upgraded. Shaw officials also say they will try to place affected employees at other Shaw plants in the region.
CNG fueling stations open in area
The first public fueling station of environmentally clean compressed natural gas in metropolitan Chattanooga has opened for business.
Miles Teems, president of Teems Electric, said the new station in Ringgold, Ga., at 465 Rollins Industrial Court represents a $700,000 investment.
Another $2 million CNG refueling site is scheduled to open this summer along Interstate 75 in Dalton, Ga.
Teems said he's looking at building another CNG facility nearby off Battlefield Parkway.
Canadian buyer plans to expand Lafayette plant
A Canadian maker of equipment for the solid waste industry is buying a LaFayette, Georgia company that had filed for bankruptcy, and it aims to at least double the existing workforce.
Phillips Consolidated, a subsidiary of Quebec-based Labrie Enviroquip Group, is paying a little more than $1 million for Phillips Bros. Machine Co. Phillips Consolidated is not related to Phillips Bros. president Randall Phillips.
"We're happy with the outcome," says Jerrold Farinash, a lawyer for Phillips Bros.
Also, the Canadian company has purchased the Phillips Bros.' Walker County, Ga., manufacturing facility, said Larry Brooks, who heads the county's development authority. That site, which for many years made Blue Bird school buses, was bought for $3 million, he said.
Brooks said Phillips Consolidated wants to add 50 people immediately to the 90 or so who work at the local facility.
Canyon Ridge developers win verdict
A Hamilton County jury has awarded an additional $11.5 million in punitive damages to developers of the Canyon Ridge resort to go along with more than $20 million in compensatory damages.
Following the longest civil jury trial ever in Hamilton County, the jury ordered financial services firm Stern Agee and Leach to pay $10 million to Canyon Ridge, LLC and $250,000 to Scenic Land, LLC. Defendant Edmund Wall will owe an additional $1 million to Canyon Ridge LLC and $250,000 to Scenic Land, LLC.
The suit, first filed in 2011, alleged that Sterne Agee and Leach and Wall worked with Chattanooga firm Grove Street Partners to plan a competing commercial development in Walker County, Georgia, while also working to plan a hotel and conference center at Canyon Ridge.