LG Electronics breaks ground on Tennessee plant
LG Electronics Inc. has broken ground in Tennessee at the site of the South Korean appliance manufacturer’s first washing machine plant in the United States.
Company and local officials were joined at the Thursday ceremony in Clarksville by U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and U.S. Sen. Bob Corker.
The 1 million-square-foot (92,900-square meter) facility is projected to cost $250 million and create 600 new jobs. Located about 50 miles northwest of Nashville, the site was selected after a national search dating back six years.
South Korean tiremaker Hankook also has a new plant in Clarksville. Hankook announced last year it was moving its North American headquarters from New Jersey to Nashville.
The LG plant will be near a new Google data center on the former Hemlock Semiconductor site that was shuttered in 2013.
VW, Fiat discuss jointly made truck
Volkswagen AG and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV have talked about joint production of some light-utility vehicles, including VW’s Amarok midsize pickup truck, The Wall Street Journal reported today.
Citing people familiar with the situation, the report said the cooperation could include jointly building future versions of VW’s Caddy panel van, a boxy vehicle popular in Germany with handymen and families as well as the Amarok.
VW said earlier this year it’s looking at its options for possibly filling the pickup truck segment in America, including potentially retooling the Atlas SUV, which is made in Chattanooga.
Other options include selling VW’s Amarok pickup, which isn’t sold now in America, or not offering a truck for the U.S. at all, according to the company.
TVA installs more monitoring wells
The Tennessee Valley Authority says it is installing 24 additional monitoring wells at a coal-fired power plant where high levels of arsenic and lead were found in groundwater.
TVA said in a fact sheet released Thursday that it continues to investigate how the toxins ended up in wells that monitor pollution from coal ash ponds at its Allen Fossil Plant in Memphis.
The shallow monitoring wells are near far deeper wells drilled by the TVA directly into the Memphis Sand aquifer, which provides Memphis’ drinking water.
TVA plans to pump fresh water out of the aquifer to cool a natural gas power plant that’s replacing the coal plant next year. The TVA said it is temporarily limiting the use of the deeper wells at the gas plant during the investigation.
Mortgage rate dips to new yearly low
The benchmark 30-year mortgage rate is at a new low for the year, touching its lowest level since last November.
Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday the rate on 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages fell to 3.86 percent from 3.89 percent last week. It was the fourth straight weekly decline for the key rate, bringing it to its lowest level since Nov. 10, 2016.
A year ago, the rate stood at 3.43 percent. It averaged 3.65 percent for all of last year.
The rate on 15-year, fixed-rate home loans remained at 3.16 percent this week. Those loans are popular with homeowners refinancing their mortgages.
Europe orders fix for Airbus A350
The European Aviation Safety Agency has issued an air worthiness directive about Airbus’s A350-941 aircraft, warning that a problem could lead to an engine explosion under certain conditions if not corrected.
The Cologne, Germany-based agency, said that Airbus has already come up with a fix and the directive, which goes into effect Thursday, orders that it be implemented on all affected planes.
The problem involves the hydraulic fluid cooling system in the fuel tanks. EASA said a failure discovered with the hydraulic “engine driven pump” could cause a fast temperature rise.
If not corrected, EASA said the condition “could lead to an uncontrolled overheat of the hydraulic fluid, possibly resulting in the ignition of the fuel-air mixture in the affected fuel tank.”