Southeast executives hopeful on inflation
The prospect of a fiscal cliff may be hanging over business executives in the Southeastern U.S., but they’re less worried about inflation, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
Representatives of the 207 firms questioned in the second week of December anticipate a 1.9 percent inflation rate for the coming 12 months. That’s a drop from their average of 2.1 percent in the prior month’s survey and is roughly in line with what most private economists anticipate.
The executives also reported improvement in their companies’ sales and profit margins, a rebound from earlier in the fall.
On average, sales are still 7.7 percent below normal. Companies with more than 500 employees show sales are off just 5 percent, while those with fewer than 100 workers are struggling with a sales gap more than twice as large.
More than one-third said they are working employees longer hours than usual. Typically in a recovery, increased hours is an early sign that companies will have to add workers.
Nebraska company plans S.C. plant
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — A Nebraska company will create nearly 90 jobs when it builds a cold-storage warehouse in South Carolina.
The South Carolina Commerce Department said Wednesday that Millard Refrigerated Services will build the distribution facility in North Charleston.
The company will spend $42 million on the plant that will employ 87 people.
The plant will freeze and store poultry, pork and beef products for export.
Work on the building should begin in the spring, with hiring to start in the summer. The plant is expected to begin operations in 2014.
The Omaha, Neb., company was founded in 1963 and has three dozen facilities in North America.
Church group makes donation to hospice
Not-for-profit Hospice Savannah Inc. has received a check for $3,000 from the St. Barbara’s Philoptochos Society of St. Paul’s Greek Orthodox Church. The money represented partial proceeds from the church’s 10th annual International Food and Wine Festival and silent auction on Sept. 8.
The society designated the funds to be used for Hospice Savannah’s annual Camp Aloha, an overnight grief camp that offers therapeutic coping tools for children and youth ages 6 through 17 who have a lost a loved one.
For more information about the 2013 camp, go to www.hospicesavannah.org/campaloha or call Full Circle bereavement counselor Barbara Moss at 912-303-9442.