RC wind farm gets green light

Representatives of Indiana Michigan Power — an operating company of American Electric Power — and the Randolph Economic Development Corporation announced that AEP and EDP Renewables North America have reached an agreement that will result in the construction of a 200-megawatt Headwaters wind farm in Randolph County.
Construction will begin before year’s end and is expected to be operational by the end of 2014. It is to be located within Washington, Union and White River Townships in Randolph County.
The agreement includes a 20-year power purchase agreement where the wind farm’s turbines will be connected to the AEP transmission system to deliver power to I&M customers in Michigan and Indiana.
EDPR CEO Gabriel Alonso said the company expects to create more than 150 full-time jobs throughout construction and more than 20 permanent jobs when construction is completed.
The investment in Randolph County will be more than $100 million, according to Interim Randolph County Economic Development Director Greg Beumer.
With the addition of Headwaters Wind Farm, the total wind power portfolio of I&M will be 450 megawatts.

FCC (Adams) gets abatement
The Berne City Council approved a so-called super abatement for a 75,500-square-foot expansion at FCC (Adams).
The expansions includes $6.3 million in property improvements and $35 million in new equipment that will be in place by March 2015.
Under the terms of the super abatement, the company will not have to pay real or property taxes on the expansion for five years. There will then be a phasing in of taxes over an additional five years.
The expansion will add 50 new jobs at the plant and $1.5 million to the company’s annual payroll.

Walgreen reaches settlement
Walgreen Co. reached an $80 million settlement with federal authorities on June 4 over the drug-store chain’s distribution of highly addictive painkillers in Florida.
It is the largest civil penalty paid under the Controlled Substances Act in Drug Enforcement Administration history.
As part of the settlement, Walgreen admitted it hadn’t upheld its obligations as a DEA registrant, which requires the company to flag suspicious sales of prescription painkillers.
Walgreen, the nation’s largest pharmacy chain, allegedly committed an “unprecedented number” of record-keeping and prescription dispensing violations and had “negligently allowed” prescription painkillers to be abused and sold on the black market.
The settlement covers six Walgreen pharmacies in Florida and a Jupiter, Fla., distribution facility, which will be blocked from shipping controlled substances until September of 2014. Walgreen has promised to create a pharmaceutical integrity department to ensure regulatory compliance and monitor for potential controlled-substance diversion, as part of the settlement.

Indiana rolls back rate cuts
Ind. Gov. Mike Pence announced on June 5 that he was undoing a series of Medicaid rate cuts made while weathering the recession.
The state plans to spend $37 million more each year in an effort to reimburse providers.
A spokeswoman for the Pence administration said the increase would amount to 2 percent more for hospitals, nursing facilities, home health and immediate care providers. Cuts in how much the state pays for dental, vision, medical transportation and other areas will be fully restored.
State lawmakers budgeted for the increased rates in the recently passed, $30 billion biennial budget.

CEO shift
H.J. Heinz Co. said it complete its acquisition by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital, the Brazilian investment firm that also owns Burger King.
3G is shifting one of its partners from the head of Burger King to head Heinz. Bernardo Hees, 43, is taking over for William Johnson, who was the seventh CEO of the 144-year-old company. He had been the CEO for the past 15 years.
Johnson walked away with $56 million in severance pay, in addition to the $156.7 million in vested stock and deferred compensation he accrued over his career.
Daniel Schwartz, 32, previously the chief operating officer of Burger King, is being crowned Burger King’s CEO.

Construction on schedule, POET says
Construction of POET-DSM Advanced Biofuels’ first commercial cellulosic bio-ethanol plant is on schedule to start up in early 2014, the parent company of POET Biorefining-Portland announced this week.
POET-DSM’s Project LIBERTY will use bales of corn cobs, leaves, husks and some stalk to produce 20 million gallons of cellulosic bio-ethanol annually, later ramping up to 25 million gallons. The plant is under construction in Emmetsburg, Iowa.
To date, the biomass receiving and grinding building, which will process an average of 770 tons of biomass per day of operation, is nearly complete and workers are finishing concrete work inside. Fermentation and saccharification tank foundations are complete and the tanks continue to be erected. Additional completed work to date includes the facility’s warehouse building, scale and the 22-acre biomass stackyard.
The next steps in construction include the continued erection of tanks, concrete, plumbing, and underground electrical as well as installation of equipment.
Farmers in the area are still signing up to deliver an expected 120,000 tons of biomass bales to the Project LIBERTY stackyard this fall. While previous harvests have primarily been used to streamline the collection and handling process at the site, biomass collected this year will be used by Project LIBERTY to produce commercial cellulosic ethanol.

Brigade Electronics honored
Brigade Electronics, which has its North American sales office in Portland, received a Fleet World Honours Award at the Royal Automotive Club in London last week for Smarteye™, an innovative vehicle safety device that can save lives and eliminate damage.
The Fleet World Honours are presented annually to motor manufacturers, service companies and individuals who have, in the opinion of the judges, achieved the highest possible level of excellence in their sector.Van Fleet World Editor, John Kendall, said: “Visibility around larger vans and trucks has been a long standing problem, particularly where it is impossible to see directly behind, as it is with most large vans, fitted with a solid bulkhead behind the cab and unglazed rear doors. The problems obviously increase for larger vehicles, where there are larger blind spots along the sides and around the front of the vehicle. Brigade Electronics’ innovative Smarteye™ system uses four small, wide-angle cameras fitted to the front, rear and sides of the vehicle. Computer software stitches and flattens the images into a single bird’s-eye view of the vehicle that can be viewed on a monitor in the cab, so the driver has an uninterrupted view around the vehicle. Technology that can save lives and eliminate damage.”
Brigade’s Smarteye™ was launched at the CV Show in April to meet the growing demands of customers who wanted to eliminate blind spots but were concerned about multiple devices for indirect vision creating driver overload. Smarteye™ offers a solution by combining the views from four cameras to create a 360° picture on a single monitor.
Corey Heniser, Portland, is vice president of sales-North America for Brigade.

Smith speaks
Donnie Smith, president and CEO of Tyson Foods, Inc., participated in a panel discussion on “Making Long-Term Decisions in a Short-Term World” Thursday to approximately 200 business executives. The Executives’ Club of Chicago event was held at Nicor Gas in Naperville, Ill.
The panel discussion provided insights on long-term value creation, investing and regulatory challenges. Panelists also discussed personal best practices on managing schedules and balancing priorities. The panel also included Martin Slark, vice chairman and CEO of Molex; Quintin Primo, CEO of Capri Capital; and was moderated by David Hanfland, a partner at A.T. Kearney.
Smith has worked at Tyson Foods for nearly 33 years and was named president and CEO of the company in 2009.
Tyson Foods is the parent company of Tyson Mexican Original, Portland.
New business development officer
Kevin Potas recently joined POET-DSM Advanced Biofuels’ as its new business development manager.
He’ll be attending next week’s Fuel Ethanol Workshop in St. Louis, Mo., to discuss licensing options for commercializing cellulosic ethanol.
POET-DSM’s Project LIBERTY is under construction in Emmetsburg, Iowa, and will begin operation in early 2014, producing 20 million gallons of cellulosic bio-ethanol from corn cobs, leaves, husks and some stalk. The plant will later ramp up to its 25 million-gallon capacity.
Potas joins POET-DSM after 17 years with Johnson & Johnson in the pharmaceutical industry, where he most recently led a team of nine district managers across five states. Prior to Johnson & Johnson, Potas was with Visscher Management for five years, where he directed operations, sales and public relations.
POET operates POET Biorefining-Portland.

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