Walmart to build high-tech warehouse
Walmart Inc. will soon begin building a warehouse in California that will use innovative technology to move more perishable groceries faster and with less waste.
Set to open in fall 2020 in Shafter, Calif., the facility will create 300 full-time jobs, the Bentonville retailer said in a news release Thursday.
Instead of manually loading pallets as in a traditional warehouse, employees will use robotics to do the heavy lifting. They will also be aided by a computer algorithm that "shows all the cases ordered for a given store and determines how to palletize them to maximize the space on a pallet or trailer," said Shayne Wahlmeier, an engineer working on the project.
"It also takes into account density -- what's crushable, what's not," Wahlmeier said in the news release.
These processes will enable the warehouse to move 40 percent more product than a traditional warehouse, with less damage to the eggs, flowers, fruit, vegetables and frozen foods being shipped, the release stated. Also, the more densely packed pallets will allow more product to fit on each truck, resulting in lower transportation costs.
-- Serenah McKay
American Express' 3Q profit up by 22%
NEW YORK -- American Express said its third-quarter profit jumped by 22 percent from a year earlier, as the credit-card giant benefited from a lower tax rate and increased spending on the company's credit cards.
The New York-based company said it earned a profit of $1.65 billion, or $1.88 a share, which is up from $1.36 billion, or $1.51 a share, in the same period a year ago. The results beat the expectations of analysts, who were looking for American Express to earn $1.77 a share, according to FactSet.
"We delivered strong results this quarter driven by higher card member spending, fee income and loans," said Stephen Squeri, the company's chairman and chief executive officer. Squeri took over American Express early this year, when CEO Kenneth Chenault retired.
American Express card users spent $294.7 billion on their cards globally last quarter, an 8 percent jump from a year earlier. In the U.S., the company's largest market, card user spending was up 10 percent from a year earlier. American Express takes a fee from merchants for each time the cards are used.
-- The Associated Press
StarKist faces $100M price-fixing fine
SAN FRANCISCO -- Authorities say StarKist has agreed to plead guilty to price fixing as part of a broad collusion investigation of the canned-tuna industry.
Federal prosecutors announced the plea agreement Thursday and said the company faces a fine up to $100 million. Bumble Bee Foods last year pleaded guilty to the same charge and paid a $25 million fine.
Chicken of the Sea has not been charged because prosecutors say the company exposed the scheme and cooperated with the investigation.
Two former Bumble Bee executives and a former StarKist executive also each pleaded guilty to price-fixing charges.
Former Bumble Bee Chief Executive Officer Christopher Lischewski has pleaded innocent to a price-fixing charge.
The three companies are accused of conspiring to keep canned-tuna prices artificially high between 2010 and 2013.
-- The Associated Press
U.S. to take offshore wind-farm bids
BOSTON -- The U.S. government is taking steps to develop offshore wind farms off both coasts.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced this week that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will hold an offshore wind auction Dec. 13 for nearly 390,000 acres of ocean off Massachusetts.
Zinke said the area, if fully developed, could supply power to nearly 1.5 million homes.
He also announced that the bureau is opening its environmental review of a 15-turbine project off Long Island, N.Y., proposed by Deepwater Wind, operators of the nation's lone commercial wind farm off Rhode Island.
And in California, Zinke announced that the bureau is seeking comment on possible areas for wind development off the state's central and northern coasts.
-- The Associated Press
Mansize to become Kleenex Extra Large
LONDON -- Kleenex will re-brand its Mansize tissues after consumers complained the name was sexist, touching off a social media conversation about what's in a name.
The company behind Kleenex, Kimberly-Clark, said Thursday that the product, which is sold only in the U.K., will now be called "Kleenex Extra Large." Packages for the tissues describe them as "confidently strong" and "comfortingly soft."
Kimberly-Clark told Britain's Daily Telegraph that it in "no way suggests" that being both soft and strong was "an exclusively masculine trait, nor do we believe that the Mansize branding suggests or endorses gender inequality."
"We are always grateful to customers who take time to tell us how our products can be improved, and we carefully consider all suggestions," the company said in a statement.
-- The Associated Press
U.S. said to have impeded Siemens deal
President Donald Trump's administration intervened to quash a $15 billion deal for Siemens Corp. to develop power stations in Iraq, instead persuading Baghdad to sign an agreement with General Electric Co., two administration officials said.
Iraq signed a memorandum of understanding with GE on Monday, after senior U.S. officials warned Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi that the future of the U.S.-Iraq relationship would be at risk if his government accepted the deal with Munich-based Siemens, according to the officials, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. The Financial Times reported the U.S. move Thursday.
The U.S. government learned in early September that Iraq was wrapping up talks with Siemens over a contract to revamp the country's entire power sector and swap out infrastructure that had been built by GE.
-- Bloomberg News
Coca-Cola promotes veteran executive
ATLANTA -- Coca-Cola Co. has named longtime company executive Brian Smith as its new president and chief operating officer.
Smith joined the company in 1997. He has led Coke's operations in Brazil and Mexico and most recently was the head of its Europe, Middle East and Africa division.
Smith will report to CEO James Quincey. Quincey served as Coke's president and COO from 2015 to 2017, when he was named CEO.
Atlanta-based Coca-Cola said the new leadership structure will help Quincey focus on long-term strategy while Smith leads day-to-day operations.
Coke also said Thursday that Chief Financial Officer Kathy Waller will retire in March.
-- The Associated Press
Business on 10/19/2018