$30 million egg plant planned in Tennessee
Owners of a company that produces organic eggs plan to invest more than $30 million to establish their first manufacturing operations in the east Tennessee city of Morristown, officials said.
Handsome Brook Farms and state officials announced Friday that the Hamblen County project will create 140 new jobs over the next five years in an existing facility, which will be modernized to produce specialty hard-cooked eggs and related products.
The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development said Handsome Brook Farms produces organic, pasture-raised eggs. The company relies on its network of small, family farms to bring fresh eggs to grocery stores across the country, the department said.
Members of the company will invest $30.8 million in the facility through HBF Development LLC, officials said.
American Airlines moves toward hydrogen fuel use
American Airlines said Monday that it invested in a company that hopes to deliver hydrogen for use in planes, one prong of the airline industry’s approach to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
American did not say how much it invested or its ownership stake in Universal Hydrogen Co., whose other backers include the venture arm of JetBlue, the venture arm of aircraft maker Airbus and GE Aviation, which makes aircraft engines.
Universal Hydrogen, based in Los Angeles, says it will build a distribution network to deliver hydrogen capsules in way that avoids the need to build new refueling infrastructure at airports.
The companies said Universal Hydrogen expects to deliver hydrogen for regional aircraft in 2025 and later to larger, single-aisle aircraft as an auxiliary power source in the late 2020s and a primary fuel by the mid-2030s — an extremely ambitious schedule.
American cast its undisclosed investment as a vote of confidence in hydrogen becoming a key element of a sustainable aviation industry.
SPAT firm extends vote for Trump merger plans
The special purpose acquisition company that intends to merge with former President Donald Trump’s social media company has again come up short in getting shareholders to give both companies another year to complete the deal.
Patrick Orlando, CEO of the Digital World Acquisition Corp., said Monday that he was extending the deadline for allowing shareholders to vote until Nov. 3. Orlando did not say how close the SPAC was to getting the necessary votes from 65% of its shareholders.
This is the third time in the past four weeks that Digital World has extended the deadline for rounding up votes from shareholders. If shareholders don’t approve a yearlong extension before Dec. 8, Digital World may be forced to liquidate and return to investors the nearly $300 million it raised in its initial public offering of stock.
That could make it difficult for the Trump Media & Technology Group and its social media platform, Truth Social, to fund its operations.
The deal has been held up by investigations by securities regulators and federal prosecutors into potentially improper communications between representatives of Digital World and Trump Media before the SPAC’s public offering in September 2021.
Amazon buys EV vans for European delivery
Amazon said Monday it will invest 1 billion euros ($972.1 million) to add thousands of more electric vans, long-haul trucks and cargo bikes to its delivery network in Europe.
The investment would grow the number of electric delivery vans the company has in Europe from roughly 3,000 to 10,000 by 2025, the Seattle-based retail giant said in an announcement on its website.
With the investment, Amazon is also hoping to purchase more than 1,500 electric trucks, up from five in the United Kingdom. To accommodate those vehicles, the company said it will build hundreds of fast chargers across its European facilities that can charge the vehicles in roughly two hours.
“Our transportation network is one of the most challenging areas of our business to decarbonize, and to achieve net-zero carbon will require a substantial and sustained investment,” Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO, said in a statement, referring to the company’s pledge to be net carbon by 2040. Despite the pledge, the company said its carbon emissions grew by 18% last year, driven by the surge in online shopping during the coronavirus pandemic.
Amazon has launched 25 “micro-mobility hubs,” or more centrally located delivery stations in dense European cities, that allow the company to try out different delivery methods, such as bike and foot deliveries. On Monday, it said it expects to double those hubs by 2025, which will allow the company to take more delivery vans off the road.