Business Blog

Food service equipment maker Middleby Corp. has bought Mississippi-based oven and kitchen appliance maker Viking Range Corp. for $380 million.   Viking Range is based in Greenwood, Miss., and makes products for use in residential cooking. Middleby said Viking Range has $200 million in annual sales. Over the last 12 months Middleby’s revenue has grown [...]

VICKSBURG — Anderson-Tully Company is shutting down a second shift at its Vicksburg sawmill and is laying off 80 employees by Jan. 4. The company tells the Vicksburg Post that the move has been in the works for two months because of a depressed housing market. “This is a core business decision to right-size production to [...]

Tom Neyhart, president of Green Grants LLC, a New Orleans solar installation firm, said it’s too early to tell what impact a recent U.S. Commerce Department decision to levy import fees on solar panels made in China will have on his business. But he can’t help but feel uneasy about the decision. Green Grants works [...]

Update: Today (Jan. 27) KiOR announced that it has closed a $75 million four-year term loan with a lender group comprised of an affiliate of Vinod Khosla and two Canadian corporations owned by certain pension fund clients of Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo). KiOR is listed along with Achillion Pharmaceuticals, Sears Holdings and Rite Aid [...]

Today, there is a warning on the Mississippi Department of Transportation’s website about icy accumulation in North Mississippi. It is for the I-55 bridge over the Coldwater River in DeSoto County. However, it would appear that the really slick ice in DeSoto County is at the Southaven Mayor’s Office. >> SEE RELATED STORY FROM THE [...]

Twin Creeks Technologies and Stion need high-tech success to compete with cheap overseas labor See related MBJ story: “Calisolar lays off 80 Calif. workers” With the continued controversy over the Obama administration’s support for the now-bankrupt Solyndra, which came weeks after the collapse of Spectrawatt and Evergreen Solar, the renewable energy industry is eagerly watching [...]

Calisolar, which said in early September that it will build a plant in Lowndes County, Miss., recently announced it’s firing 80 workers from its polysilicon solar cell manufacturing plant in Sunnyvale, Calif. The solar start-up company, which was founded in 2006, has more than 350 employees. The company is moving away from solar cell manufacturing [...]

Every year, hunters flock to the Delta to take advantage of some of the best public hunting land in the state offered by the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries & Parks’ wildlife management areas (WMAs) and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Theodore Roosevelt National Wildlife Refuge Complex. This year, however, hunters are wondering if [...]

Having a jobs plan has gotten pretty trendy this election year. Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant reveals his 10-point plan at a Byram manufacturing plant after receiving gubernatorial endorsements from the Mississippi Manufacturers Association and other trade groups.

Empty seats were at a premium Aug. 10 at the Jackson Convention Complex as hundreds gathered for the state’s first-ever Creative Economy Summit. Attendees came to learn more about the creative economy, what it is, where it is and how communities can grow it, adding jobs and enhancing their quality of life. The event, the [...]