Bakery in Georgia to add 160 workers
King’s Hawaiian will expand its bakery in Georgia, investing $85 million and hiring more than 160 new employees.
The privately owned company based in Los Angeles announced Tuesday that it would construct a 150,000-square-foo building across the street from its existing production plant in Oakwood, northeast of Atlanta. The company says the new plant, scheduled to open in fall 2023, will allow it to increase production “significantly.”
The maker of breads, rolls, buns and sauces currently has more than 700 employees in Oakwood.
King’s Hawaiian CEO Mark Taira said the company has benefited from food science, manufacturing and robotics partnerships in the state. The highly mechanized plant operates 24 hours a day and was producing 75% of the company’s products by 2019.
King’s Hawaiian was founded in 1950 in Hilo, Hawaii, and operated in Honolulu before opening a bakery in Torrance, California, in 1977 and eventually shifting all business to the mainland. The Georgia plant was opened in 2010 to improve distribution of the company’s breads on the East Coast and added a fourth production line in 2020 at a cost of about $30 million.
The company is expected to use Georgia’s Quick Start program, which provides training tailored to employers, for new workers. Georgia officials didn’t say how much the state would spend on job training.
Denso adds solar farm to power Maryville plant
The automotive supplier Denso is teaming up with Silicon Ranch, one of the nation’s biggest solar power developers, to build a new solar facility to supply all of the electrical power for Denso’s plant in Maryville, Tennessee.
Through collaboration with the City of Maryville Electric Department and Silicon Ranch, Denso will access a portion of the total 10.5 megawatts of solar energy produced under TVA’s Generation Flexibility program. TVA allows local power companies (LPCs) to generate up to 5% of their total energy load to meet the renewable energy goals of their customers.
The new solar farm is the first of four solar production facilities the group plans to bring online in Tennessee.
“Our mission is to contribute to a better world, and as part of that, we’re committed to reducing CO2 emissions, not only through our products, but also in our operations and processes,” said Shinichi Nakamizo, president of Denso’s Maryville facility.
Twitter setting up new access rules
Elon Musk said Wednesday that Twitter will not allow anyone who has been kicked off the site to return until it sets up procedures on how to do that, a process that will take at least a few weeks.
That would mean people banned from the site for violating Twitter’s rules for harassment, violence, or election and COVID-related misinformation will not be able to return before next Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections.
The pledge came after Musk, who took control of the social-media site last week after buying it for $44 billion, said in a tweet that he had met with a handful of civil-society leaders “about how Twitter will continue to combat hate & harassment & enforce its election integrity policies.”
Those attending the meeting Tuesday asked Musk not to restore the banned users ahead of the midterms, said Jessica González, an attorney and co-CEO of the advocacy group Free Press who attended the meeting.
COVID outbreak shutters Chinese iPhone plant
Access to an industrial zone in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou was suspended Wednesday after the city reported 64 coronavirus cases and workers who assemble Apple Inc. iPhones left their factory in the zone following outbreaks.
The announcement did not say whether the isolation of the Zhengzhou Airport Economic Zone was related to cases at the Foxconn factory. It gave no indication of what prompted the closure. It said no one can enter or leave for one week except to deliver food and medical supplies.
Separately, the government reported 64 confirmed cases had been found in Zhengzhou over the past 24 hours. It said 294 asymptomatic cases also had been found in the city of 12.5 million. It did not say how many were in the industrial zone.
Meanwhile, the government of Macao announced the southern Chinese territory it will test its 700,000 people on Friday and Saturday. The government said the mass testing is a precaution after an earlier round on Tuesday found no cases.
The ruling Communist Party is enforcing a “Zero COVID” policy that has closed areas throughout China for weeks to try to isolate every case.
That has kept China’s infection rate relatively low but has disrupted trade and business at a time when other countries are easing anti-virus curbs. Public frustration with the restrictions has boiled over into fights with police in some areas.
Boeing to boost airplane production
Boeing officials vowed Wednesday to significantly increase airplane production and cash flow in the next few years as the company seeks to recover from years of mistakes in its airline and defense businesses.
The aircraft maker said it expects to boost revenue to $100 billion and generate $10 billion in annual cash flow by 2025 or 2026. That upbeat forecast is based on raising production of its best-selling plane, the 737 Max, from 31 to 50 per month and moving beyond billions of losses in fixed-price contracts for the Pentagon.
Boeing is chasing European rival Airbus for supremacy after two deadly crashes involving Max planes, production flaws with a bigger plane, the 787, bad military contracts and other missteps.
“Do I think we’ve given up leadership in this industry? Not for one minute,” declared CEO David Calhoun at an investor day meeting with analysts in Seattle.
— Compiled by Dave Flessner