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Trade Wars
Ronnybrook Farm Dairy To Anchor Ulster Agribusiness Center At Kingston’s IPark 87
Ronnybrook Farm Dairy, based in Ancramdale has signed a letter of intent with the Ulster County Economic Development Alliance (UCEDA) to establish operations at the future Ulster Agribusiness Center in iPark 87 in the Town of Ulster. The facilities would be located on UCEDA-owned property in iPark 87. Under the agreement, Ronnybrook would lease two buildings on the iPark East campus.
An existing warehouse would be used for cultured dairy production, and another building, a former powerhouse, would be converted to a cold/freezer storage facility that Ronnybrook would manage for the Economic Development Alliance. Ronnybrook owner Rick Osofsky said they share the county’s “vision for a strong and sustainable food economy” and look forward to moving the project forward.
Read more at Mid-Hudson News
Next Nuclear Sub Program Draws $15.4B
The U.S. Navy awarded $15.38 billion to General Dynamics Electric Boat Corp. in the latest modifications to a long-running contract for design, planning and procurement, and construction of the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines. Electric Boat is designing the Columbia-class subs jointly with Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding subsidiary, as a replacement for the current Ohio-class submarines. In its announcement, the Pentagon noted the industrial base development work outlined by this modification will promote the Navy’s plan for serial production of Columbia- and Virginia-class nuclear submarines.
The Columbia-class is a series of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine developed to replace the Ohio-class, with an initial delivery in 2027 and naval service to begin by 2031. These are described as the largest and most advanced submarines ever to be built for the U.S. Navy, 560 feet long and featuring a 43-ft beam, with a displacement of 21,140 tons. Initial construction for Columbia-class subs began in 2020 for the first of a total of 12 vessels, which are project to have a 42-year service life.
Read more at American Machinist
Toyota To Invest $1 Billion To Increase U.S. Production In Kentucky, Indiana Plants
Toyota Motor on Monday announced it would spend $1 billion at two U.S. plants as part of a plan to invest up to $10 billion domestically over the next five years. Toyota in November confirmed plans to invest up to $10 billion in its U.S. plants through 2030. That came roughly a month after President Donald Trump said during a speech that such an investment would come from the Japanese automaker.
The new investments include $800 million at a plant in Georgetown, Kentucky, to increase production capacity of the automaker’s Camry sedan and RAV4 crossover. The remaining $200 million is to increase capacity for the Toyota Grand Highlander SUV at a plant in Princeton, Indiana. “Toyota’s investment in the U.S. is for the long-term, tied to our philosophy of building where we sell and buying where we build,” Toyota Motor North America Chief Operating Officer Mark Templin said in a statement.
Read more at CNBC
Danone To Buy Protein And Fiber Food Maker Huel
Danone is buying Huel, a maker of ready-to-drink meals and high-protein products, the company announced Monday. The Oikos maker did not disclose the price, but The Wall Street Journal estimated the deal is worth nearly $1.2 billion. Danone touted Huel’s “best-in-class” digital execution, direct-to-consumer business and a consumer base in the U.K., Europe and the U.S. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval.
Danone brands, including low-sugar Too Good and protein-rich Oikos, have been big winners among consumers looking to eat healthier and those on GLP-1s for weight loss. The deal for Huel expands Danone’s portfolio of functional and complete nutrition offerings. James McMaster, Huel’s CEO, said in a statement that Danone will provide infrastructure, distribution and R&D capabilities to allow 11-year-old Huel to enter new markets and cater to additional consumers as demand “for convenient, complete nutrition continues to grow.”
Read more at Manufacturing Dive
Elon Musk Unveils Chip Manufacturing Plans for SpaceX and Tesla
Elon Musk recently outlined ambitious plans for a chip-building collaboration between his companies Tesla and SpaceX. Bloomberg reports that Musk shared his plans on Saturday night at an event in downtown Austin, Texas, with a photo suggesting that what Musk is calling the “Terafab” facility will be built near Tesla’s Austin headquarters and “gigafactory.” The project, estimated to cost around $20 billion over multiple years, will begin with an advanced technology fab capable of producing and testing various chips.
Musk said he’s pursuing this project because semiconductor manufacturers aren’t making chips quickly enough for his companies’ artificial intelligence and robotics needs: “We either build the Terafab or we don’t have the chips, and we need the chips, so we build the Terafab.” The goal is to manufacture chips that can support 100 to 200 gigawatts of computing power per year on Earth, along with a terawatt in space, Musk said. He did not offer a timeline for these plans.
Read more at Tech Crunch
Estee Lauder In Merger Discussions With Spanish Beauty Group Puig
Puig and Estée Lauder Companies are considering a merger, the two companies confirmed on Monday. In a statement, the Spanish firm which owns the likes of Byredo and Charlotte Tilbury and makes perfumes for the fashion brands Rabanne and Carolina Herrera said the two firms are in discussions regarding a “potential business combination,” confirming an earlier Financial Times report. According to the statements, the two companies have not yet reached an agreement nor made a final decision. A merger would create a company with around a $40 billion market capitalisation.
Estée Lauder Companies stock price has dropped almost three quarters since the beginning of 2022 as over-reliance on the sluggish Chinese market and department stores dented its revenues. Since installing a new chief executive, Stéphane de La Faverie, last year, the company has begun to modernise, revamping brands like MAC Cosmetics and Clinique, entering higher-growth channels such as Amazon and Sephora, and putting poorer-performing brands up for sale. Both firms also operate in the fashion space: Estée Lauder Companies owns Tom Ford, while Puig controls the likes of Jean Paul Gaultier, Dries Van Noten, and Rabanne.
Read more at Business of Fashion
GM Begins Public Road Testing Of Its Next-Generation Self-Driving Tech
General Motors has started testing its next-generation, “eyes-off” autonomous driving technology on public roads with development vehicles operating on limited access highways in California and Michigan, the automaker announced in a March 23 blog post. GM said it will soon evaluate its self-driving tech with over 200 test vehicles in real-world driving environments. Each vehicle will have a trained test driver behind the wheel who can take manual control of the vehicle at any time.
The automaker announced its next-generation autonomous driving technology last October, which is a more advanced, Level 3 version of its Super Cruise hands-free highway driving system. The upgraded system will debut in 2028 in the Cadillac Escalade IQ electric SUV before rolling out to more GM vehicles. GM will launch the self-driving system for highway driving initially, before offering “driveway-to-driveway” capabilities. Last March, GM said it was using Nvidia’s Drive AGX platform for the development of its next-generation autonomous driving technology.
Read more at Ward’s Auto
NASA to Spend $20 Billion On Moon Base, Cancel Orbiting Lunar Station
NASA is cancelling plans to deploy a space station in lunar orbit and will instead use its components to construct a $20 billion base on the moon's surface over the next seven years, its new chief Jared Isaacman said on Tuesday. Isaacman, who was sworn in at the agency in December, made the announcement at the opening of a day-long event at NASA's Washington headquarters at which he outlined a raft of changes he is making to the agency's flagship moon program Artemis.
The Lunar Gateway station, largely already built with contractors Northrop Grumman (NOC.N), opens new tab and Lanteris Space Systems, owned by Intuitive Machines (LUNR.O), opens new tab, was meant to be a space station parked in a lunar orbit. Repurposing the craft for a lunar surface base is not simple. Lunar Gateway was designed to serve as both a research platform and a transfer station that astronauts would use to board the moon landers before descending to the lunar surface.
Read more at Reuters
Trump Administration To Pay French Company TotalEnergies $1B To Walk Away From US Offshore Wind Leases- AP
The Trump administration will pay $1 billion to a French company to walk away from two U.S. offshore wind leases as the administration ramps up its campaign against offshore wind and other renewable energy. TotalEnergies has agreed to what’s essentially a refund of its leases for projects off the coasts of North Carolina and New York, and will invest the money in fossil fuel projects instead, the Department of Interior announced Monday.
The company pledged to not develop any new offshore wind projects in the United States. CEO Patrick Pouyanné said in a statement that TotalEnegeries renounced offshore wind development in the United States in exchange for the reimbursement of the lease fees, “considering that the development of offshore wind projects is not in the country’s interest.” Pouyanné said the refunded lease fees will finance the construction of a liquefied natural gas plant in Texas and the development of its oil and gas activities, calling it a “more efficient use of capital” in the U.S.
Read more at The AP
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