LITTLE ROCK — ConAgra to acquire
firm’s LR pork plant
ConAgra Foods Inc. of Omaha, Neb., said Tuesday that it has agreed to buy Odom’s Tennessee Pride, including a Little Rock pork-processing plant with 300 employees.
ConAgra does not operate any pork-processing plants, said Dan Hare, a ConAgra spokesman. No decision has been made about the viability of the Little Rock plant, Hare said. If it is kept opened, it would be operated under different ownership.
ConAgra has 45 days to make a decision about the plant because that is when the deal will close, Hare said. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Odom’s Tennessee Pride’s two other facilities, in Dickson, Tenn., and Madison, Tenn., make frozen breakfast sandwiches but do not process pork, Hare said.
Odom’s Tennessee Pride is the second-largest U.S. producer of frozen and refrigerated breakfast sandwiches and sausage.
The company has annual revenue of about $190 million.
Trade panel ruling vexes Whirlpool
Whirlpool Corp. said it’s disappointed by a U.S.
International Trade Commission ruling Tuesday that found unfairly priced LG Electronics Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.
refrigerators from South Korea and Mexico failed to harm U.S. producers.
Whirlpool said in an e-mail that it’s deciding whether to appeal the ruling, which may mean tariffs won’t be imposed on the imports. Whirlpool, based in Benton Harbor, Mich., filed anti-dumping and anti-subsidy petitions tied to the products in March 2011.
In Fort Smith, Whirlpool is preparing to vacate its manufacturing plant, which will leave about 800 workers without jobs. The company said in October that it would close its plant by the middle of this year because of sluggish demand for side-by-side refrigerators.
At its peak in August 2005, the plant employed 4,600.
State index up 4.20
as 15 stocks grow
The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, jumped 4.20 to 231.21 on Tuesday.
“Better-than-expected earnings pushed markets higher as U.S. stocks rallied by 1.5 percent,” said Chris Harkins, senior vice president and managing director of Delta Trust Investments Inc. in Little Rock. “The Arkansas Index caught the wave as all but one of the 16 stocks finished higher.”
America’s Car-Mart and Deltic Timber each surged 3.5 percent, while Dillard’s rose 1 percent, trading at a 52-week high, Harkinssaid.
The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.
Business, Pages 23 on 04/18/2012