Business Blog

Toyota Motor Manufacturing sold a record 9.75 million vehicles last year, according to an official tally released Monday, roaring past General Motors and Volkswagen to reclaim its title as the world’s top automaker in 2012. The Japanese automaker which opened a Corolla plant in Mississippi’s Blue Springs in 2011 had a 27 percent increase in [...]

BLUE SPRINGS — David Copenhaver, the highest ranking American at Toyota’s Mississippi plant, will retire at the end of the year. Copenhaver confirmed his plans during events this week to celebrate the first anniversary of Corolla production at the plant. He’ll wrap up his 16-year-career with Toyota on Dec. 21. Toyota sources say the change [...]

by Dennis Seid/NEMS Daily Journal TUPELO – Every 85 seconds or so, a Corolla rolls down the “money line.” It’s the nickname for the inspection line where finishing details are made before the vehicle starts its journey to a Toyota dealership Some 600 cars are assembled daily at Toyota Mississippi, about where company officials hoped [...]

At first glance, the State Route 9 reconstruction underway in Northeast Mississippi is simply a road improvement project supporting the new Toyota automobile plant at Blue Springs. However, officials say the project is bigger than even Toyota. In fact, plans for the project were hatched before Toyota announced it was coming to Mississippi. The project [...]

Mississippians cheered the arrival of big league economic development this decade with Nissan’s arrival in Canton and Toyota pending move into Blue Springs. But a property rights movement is working to blunt the enthusiasm for more economic bonanzas — at least if state incentives include offering the mega employers private property the state would seize [...]

A ballot initiative to curb eminent domain in Mississippi to protect private property from private enterprise carries a cost land owners may not have considered, says Randy Kelley, executive director of Three Rivers Planning and Development District. New limits on the state’s eminent domain law through a constitutional change could end the paying of “replacement [...]