Southworth will add 35 at Manila factory
Southworth Products Corp. in Manila plans to announce today that it will hire 35 employees to make additions to its product line, a county economic development official said Tuesday.
The 35 jobs will increase Southworth's employment to about 140 to 150, said Clif Chitwood, Mississippi County's economic development director.
Southworth's customers include firms such as Ford Motor Co. and Wal-Mart -- any business that needs machinery to help pick up items in warehouses, Chitwood said.
After training, the new workers will make about $20 an hour, or about $42,000 a year, Chitwood said. Mississippi County will provide $350,000 in incentives to assist Southworth, Chitwood said.
Southworth, which had an expansion of 15 jobs in 2012, is based in Falmouth, Maine, and has had a plant in Manila for more than 20 years. Manila is about 20 miles west of Blytheville.
-- David Smith
Auction to sell items of ex-Turner officer
Items belonging to Dale Bartlett, a former executive of the defunct Turner Grain Merchandising Inc., will be auctioned Jan. 14 in Jonesboro.
Turner Grain Merchandising of Brinkley filed for bankruptcy in 2014, and numerous farmers say they weren't paid for their rice.
Bartlett has filed for personal bankruptcy. His estate will auction three vehicles, a coin collection and several firearms, according to the auctioneer, Joel King of Jonesboro. The auction will be held at 6 p.m. at the Hilton Garden Inn in Jonesboro, King said. A full auction catalog is available at www.ucdynastyauctions.com.
Bartlett's estate will auction 10 parcels of land sometime in mid-February, King said. The parcels are in Lee, Monroe and Phillips counties and range in size from a 1-acre lot in Monroe County to an 80-acre tract in Phillips County, King said.
-- Scott Morris
Arkansas Index rises 2.01 as stocks revive
The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, rose 2.01 to 306.73 Tuesday.
"After fluctuating through the session, the major averages closed fractionally higher, breaking a three-day slump," said Bob Williams, senior vice president and managing director of Simmons First Investment Group Inc. in Little Rock.
Wal-Mart rose almost 2.4 percent in active trading, Williams said.
Murphy Oil dropped just more than 1.5 percent.
Total volume for the index was 27.8 million shares.
The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.
Business on 01/06/2016