Van Buren company to expand food plant
FORT SMITH - Van Buren food-service company Tankersley Foodservice LLC has announced a $4 million plant expansion that will add 20 to 40 new jobs, President Thomas Moon said Monday.
The company is adding a 10,000-square-foot cooler dock, an 18,000-squarefoot frozen storage facility and a new customer service area, Moon said.
Work is expected to be completed in October.
The plant expansion will require hiring warehouse workers and forklift drivers at first, and sales representatives and delivery drivers later, Moon said. Tankersley Foodservice provides fresh and frozen foods to more than 2,500 commercial customers, including restaurants, stores and schools.
The company, which now occupies a 150,000-square-foot facility, employs 220.
- Lisa Hammersly
State economy posts gains in 1st quarter
Arkansas’ economy performed about as well as the U.S. economy in the first quarter, according to the Burgundy Book report issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Arkansas’ employment growth in the first three months of the year trailed the nation’s growth, but the unemployment rate in the state’s largest metropolitan areas held well below the nation’s rate, the report, released last week, said. The Northwest Arkansas unemployment rate was 5.1 percent in April, the most recent month in which information was available. The rate in Little Rock’s metro area was 6.2 percent. The national rate was 7.5 percent.
The report said the residential real estate market continued to improve in the first quarter, as home prices and building permits were up from a year earlier. Households continued to reduce credit card debt during the period, but automotive debt increased at a faster pace than the national rate, the report said. Mortgage, credit card and auto loan delinquency rates in Arkansas were below those nationally.
- David Smith
Arkansas Index rises before Fed meeting
The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the state’s largest public companies, increased 2.24 to 277.92 Monday.
“Fueled by better-than expected economic data, the major averages ended the session in positive territory as investors await the Fed’s upcoming two day monetary policy meeting,” said Bob Williams, senior vice president and managing director of Delta Trust Investments Inc. in Little Rock. “Arkansas stocks finished strong with an advance decline ratio of 3 to 1.”
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 21 on 06/18/2013