Magnolia Marketplace

Toyota sold about 418,000 more vehicles in 2012 than it did in 2011.

The numbers came from Toyota’s year-end sales figures, which the company released Thursday afternoon. Total units sold for 2012 were 2,082,504, up from 1,644,661 in 2011. That represented an increase of 26.6 percent.

Sales across all auto companies were 14.5 million, the highest since 2007.

Sales of the Corolla, which is built in Blue Springs, were also up 21.1 percent this year over last. The Corolla was the compamy’s second most popular model as far as total units sold, behind the Camry. Sales of vehicles made in North America were up 28.4 percent. Selling days for each year were the same, at 307.

Click the link below for the entire chart.

Toyota 2012 sales

Jackson State University will start the process of rebranding itself tomorrow during halftime of the Tigers’ game against Alabama A&M at Veterans Memorial Stadium.

The school will unveil its new logo, and launch its new website. Each is the result of a research campaign the school used a marketing firm to conduct the past several months. The firm surveyed JSU faculty, staff, alumni, current and prospective students in and outside of Mississippi to gauge their perception of the school.

“We want to ensure that the logo reflects the quality of the institution and that we are communicating with a unified voice through our branding,” JSU president Dr. Carolyn W. Meyers said in a press release. ”We believe the new brand reflects the university’s long history and tradition, as well as our commitment to learning, technology and innovation.”

Designed by AndiSites Inc., the new website will go live right after the game. It will be launched in phases. Over the next several months, the logo will appear on television, billboards, university buses and vehicles and signs in the Jackson area. Merchandise featuring the new logo will be available in JSU’s campus bookstore next semester.

The practice of rebranding at colleges and universities has been around almost as long as the institutions. For example, Mississippi State University was called Mississippi A&M, then Mississippi State College until 1932, when it became Mississippi State. A more modern example is Belhaven University in Jackson, which was named Belhaven College until just a few years ago.

“In an increasingly competitive environment, we want to position the university for the future,” Meyers said.

The August jobs report issued Friday morning was mostly met with disappointment, but there was some good news at Canton’s Nissan plant.

The company is looking for maintenance technicians. Candidates with a minimum of five years industrial tech experience are invited to go online to create a profile and submit a resume. Nissan will then select applicants for a round of in-person interviews.

Nissan recently announced that its Canton facility would add the Sentra compact sedan, the Xterra SUV and the Frontier compact truck to its production line. The company will still make the full-size Titan truck, Armada SUV and the mid-size Altima sedan in Canton. New hires to produce the expanded lineup will create a total of 1,000 new jobs, officials announced in June. Total employment at the facility is expected to reach 4,500.

With those additions, total employment at the facility, which opened in 2003, is expected to reach 4,500. To compare, the Toyota plant in Blue Springs employs a little more than 2,000 people directly, but it only produces one vehicle – the Corolla compact sedan.

To apply for a maintenance tech position at Nissan, go here.

It’s football season, which means it’s tailgating season.

Things are already getting serious in Pontotoc. The Pontotoc County Chamber of Commerce and the Pontotoc Main Street Association held the first Rebel/Bulldog Tailgate Challenge Saturday on the town’s courthouse square.

The Challenge was essentially a barbecue cooking contest, with teams split into supporters of either Mississippi State or Ole Miss. Teams competed in four categories — ribs, chicken, pork and vegetables. Scores from each team were accumulated and applied to either Ole Miss or State. State won, and received a trophy for doing so. No word yet if there’s a billboard planned to mark the victory.

Moving on, there is a new industry organization that caters to businesses that cater to tailgaters. That could potentially be a wide range of places — grocery stores, gas stations, home improvement places, even furniture stores. The Tailgating Industry Association works like other trade organizations: Members pay a fee and the association markets, promotes and otherwise tries to make its members money.

The Association’s website doesn’t have a list of members, but it does list a fee schedule: Manufacturers and suppliers with less than $2 million in annual revenue pay $500 annually. That number increases based on annual sales, and is capped at $2,500. Media outlets can join for $250. (The Mississippi Business Journal will not be joining.)

Check out the TIA’s website here.

Word started circulating Monday that Mississippi Power Co. had ended its relationship with KBR, a Texas-based engineering and construction design/build firm involved in the Kemper County coal plant.

That’s not the case, a KBR spokesperson told the Mississippi Business Journal Tuesday morning.

Marianne Gooch said KBR is winding down its involvement in the construction phase of the plant, but will still provide engineering and start-up services. The plant is scheduled to begin commercial operation in May 2014. Employees in KBR’s construction division will leave the job site by this Thursday, Aug. 9, Gooch said, but will have the opportunity to catch on with other construction companies MPC and its parent Southern Co. are using to build the $2.88 billion plant.

KBR owns a portion of the Transport Integrated Gasification technology that will be used at the Kemper facility.

The coal plant has been the subject of a legal challenge from the Sierra Club, which currently has the issue in Harrison County Chancery Court for a second time. The Mississippi Public Service Commission voted in late June not to take any action on rate increase requests associated with the plant until the litigation concludes. The Mississippi Supreme Court last week denied MPC’s request to institute interim rate increases while the appeals process moved forward.

A MPC spokesperson did not immediately return cell phone and email messages Tuesday morning.

The pre-trial phase of the Beef Plant litigation is about to end.

The state and the private counsel it hired is suing Georgia-based Facilities Group, in an attempt to recoup the roughly $55 million the state lost when the cull cattle facility in Oakland failed. Facilities Group was brought on board to manage the construction of the plant. Three of its executives were eventually convicted of making an illegal gratuity to former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove’s campaign.

Hinds County Circuit Judge Winston Kidd took two motions under advisement at a hearing Monday. Lawyers for the Facilities Group argued a motion for summary judgment, which would effectively throw out the case.  Plaintiffs argued a motion to give them possession of the records from the grand jury proceedings that led to the indictment of the Facilities Group executives and Richard Hall, who the state hired to run the facility.

Kidd didn’t rule on either motion Monday, but said he would by late this week or early next week. The trial is scheduled to start March 19.

Dorsey Carson, who represents the plaintiffs, said in a phone interview Tuesday morning that two mediation sessions have failed to render a settlement. Carson didn’t sound optimistic one would be reached before it’s time to pick the jury.

“Both sides have exchanged offers but frankly I don’t think they are going to come up with enough money (to settle it),” Carson said.

It’s likely settlement talks will take on a keen sense of urgency if Kidd denies the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, which represents their last chance to terminate the litigation short of settling. If March 19 arrives and there’s still no agreement, negotiations will probably get super serious.

House Minority Leader Rep. Bobby Moak, D-Bogue Chitto, dropped a strong hint at today’s meeting of the Stennis Capitol Press Corps that Democrats could turn to the voter initiative process to advance some of their policies.

“The initiative and referendum process is a great tool for the minority,” Moak told the 40 or so people at the Capitol Club.

Moak, like everybody else, noticed during last fall’s elections that the three initiatives on the ballot generated more conversation than any of the candidates, including those running for statewide office. “They drove up turnout in a lot of places,” Moak said.

I asked Moak what issues Democratic officials were considering for the initiative process. He wouldn’t say. He wouldn’t give the slightest hint. Just a guess, but there has been some casual talk in the past about an effort to insert into Mississippi’s Constitution an amendment that would mandate the full funding of the Mississippi Adequate Education Program every year. MAEP is the formula that determines how much state funding each school district gets every fiscal year.

Full funding of education, mental health services and Medicaid will be top priorities for Democrats come budget time. Moak said as much Monday. “We should take care of the basic needs and we can fight over everything else.”

It’s a possibility if Democrats lose that fight at the Capitol, they’ll at least try to win it with an initiative or two.

Oktibbeha County Economic Development Authority President Jon Maynard said at a meeting of that organization Monday that two manufacturers with ties to the automotive industry have started kicking the tires on possible sites in the Starkville area.

According to a story on the Starkville Daily News‘ website, Maynard declined to name the companies, citing confidentiality agreements. Starkville is almost exactly halfway between Canton and Blue Springs, and would make a good geographical match for a company that wanted to do business with Nissan and Toyota. Four-lane highways connect the three cities, so this will certainly be something to keep an eye on.

Maynard also updated the progress on a few other projects that have been simmering for a while in Starkville, including the mixed-use CottonMill Marketplace. The SDN has it covered here.

In this week’s MBJ I had a story about the beer legislation that has tried and failed the past few legislative sessions. You can read all about it here  (subscriber link).

Bills that would raise the state’s alcohol-by-weight content from 5 percent (lowest in the U.S.) to 8 percent have died in committee at least the last two sessions, as have bills that would allow the state’s only brewery to offer samples of its product to those taking tours of its facility. Bills that would have legalized homebrewing and allowed a brewery to brew illegal beer as long as it’s shipped and sold out of state have also perished. (It’s worth noting that the fact homebrewing is illegal has done nothing to stunt its popularity here).

After my deadline last week, though, came a bill in the Senate authored by Senate President Pro-Tem Terry Brown, R-Columbus, that would legalize homebrewing. Like Rep. Jessica Upshaw, R-Diamondhead, who has introduced beer legislation in the House, Brown’s filing a similar bill is significant.

Because while the bills have enjoyed a modicum of bipartisan support in the past, I can’t remember the GOP jumping on the bill-filing train before now. They may have; I just haven’t confirmed as much. Democrats have traditionally filed and supported the bills the loudest. The committees the bills died in were split among which party controlled them. The GOP now controls the House committee (Ways and Means) and the Senate committee (Finance) in which these bills currently sit.

And that was the gist of this week’s story: Longtime supporters of the beer agenda are more optimistic the legislation’s chances of passage are greater this time, if only because it’s likely lawmakers won’t have to face re-election in November. They may have to if the redistricting process gets squirrely, but it’s unlikely. Election-year politics killed the bills before they were even filed last year.

While it would legalize homebrewing, Brown’s bill does have some limits on the amount one household can brew per year: If there’s only one person over the age of 21 years residing in a single household, that house can brew no more than 100 gallons of beer annually. If there are two or more folks over 21 in one house, that limit rises to 200 gallons per year. The bill would outlaw homebrew being sold, but it would allow it to be exhibited at competitions, tastings, county fairs, etc.

Behind Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, Brown is the Senate’s second-most powerful member. So it’s not insignificant that he’s filed this legislation. Upshaw and other Republican supporters of the beer bills have made it into an economic issue by tying it to tourism. How beer legislation in both chambers is handled in committee will be interesting.

From the third quarter to the fourth quarter of 2011, Mississippians’ consumer confidence jumped 10 percent.

That’s what jumped out of the latest edition of “Economy Watch,” a survey published by Mississippi State’s College of Business. The college conducted, it says, more than 500 phone surveys to arrive at its conclusion.

The findings echo what state economist Dr. Darrin Webb told lawmakers recently: that the state’s economy improved the last quarter of 2011, but the overall pace of recovery would likely slow to a crawl this year. Getting back to pre-recession levels of employment is going to take another few years, Webb said.

The Mississippi Index of Consumer Sentiment, “Economy Watch” tell us, is made up of two factors: how folks feel about current economic conditions and how they think future conditions will go. The reading at the end of 2011, 89.2, is the highest since 2007. The college considers a MICS reading of 90 to be the benchmark of a healthy economy.

To see the entire survey results, click here.