Share This Link

Keeneland is working with the Jockeys’ Guild and Lexington physician Dr. Barry Schumer to develop a system to maintain jockeys’ updated medical histories so they are immediately accessible to emergency personnel at racetracks through the country and possibly the world. “With the use of an access code, authorized emergency medical staff around the country would be able to get a rider’s medical history,” explained Schumer, Keeneland’s medical director.  “The information would be secure, regularly updated, and promptly accessible to the emergency team.” Schumer, who has been associated with Keeneland for 27 years, said that knowing a jockey’s medical history is particularly important if a rider is in shock, has a head injury, doesn’t speak English or has no family present. The goal is to have the system operating by the fall meet at Keeneland.

Modine Manufacturing Co. is expanding its operations in Harrodsburg as it moves production to the Kentucky plant from its Camdenton, Mo., facility, which is scheduled to close within the next 18 to 24 months as part of the Wisconsin-based company’s restructuring plan to improve profitability. With the new business, the Harrodsburg plant’s workforce is expected to double in size to approximately 400 hourly and 40 salaried employees.

Production being transferred to Modine’s Harrodsburg plant from Camdenton consists of aluminum radiators, charge air coolers and oil coolers for the off-highway market. The Harrodsburg facility manufactures round tube plate fin, heat exchangers, and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning modules, and systems for automotive, truck and off-highway applications.

“We are excited about the opportunities the added production will provide for our facility and our employees,” said John R. Foutch, Harrodsburg plant manager. “We expect the plant to be running 24 hours a day, seven days a week when we’ve fully ramped up. In fact, we have already started hiring for segments of the business that are in the process of being transferred.”

One skill set the Harrodsburg plant is especially interested in is aluminum TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas) welders and the facility has made recruiting these specialized employees a priority. The TIG process generates heat via an arc of electricity that jumps from a tungsten metal electrode to the metal surface intended to be welded. Aluminum is the metal most frequently welded with the TIG process, particularly in lighter gauges associated with automotive applications. The company is working with the state of Kentucky for granting inducements in connection with the anticipated costs incurred in expansion of the Harrodsburg plant.

Much like San Francisco serves as the gateway to California’s wine country, Louisville is hoping to capitalize on its location and become the gateway to Kentucky’s Bourbon Trail, which highlights seven Kentucky distilleries that offer tours and tastings.

With that goal, the Louisville Convention and Visitors Bureau has unveiled Louisville’s Urban Bourbon Trail, which features eight Louisville establishments that serve Kentucky bourbon and bourbon products. The trail starts with the Kentucky Distillers’ Association exhibit at the visitor’s center in downtown Louisville and includes The Bar at BLU in the Louisville Marriott Downtown, Bourbons Bistro, The Brown Hotel Bar, Jockey Silks Bourbon Bar and Lounge in the Galt House Hotel and Suites, Maker’s Mark Bourbon House and Lounge, The Old Seelbach Bar in the Seelbach Hilton, Park Place on Main and Proof on Main. Each location is stocked with at least 50 bourbons and some offer as many as 150.

For more information on the Urban Bourbon Trail, visit www.JustAddBourbon.com.

Georgetown College is one of only 48 colleges in the nation selected to share in a $60 million education grant that will be used to help boost science education in the United States.

Colleges in 21 states and Puerto Rico will receive $700,000 to $1.6 million from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute over the next four years to revitalize their life sciences undergraduate instruction. The institute has challenged the colleges to create more engaging science classes, bring real-world research experiences to students and increase the diversity of students who study science.

Georgetown College, the only Kentucky college selected for the grant program, is launching science careers seminars to introduce students to professional scientists from academia, industry, government and non-profit organizations.

The seminar will work to foster mentoring relationships between freshmen and sophomores and scientists from Georgetown and other institutions to help them learn the skills they need to succeed in science. Students will also have access to a new HHMI-funded summer research program.

To ensure that its students are ready to confront the kind of science researchers are doing today, Georgetown is also revising its curriculum, designing new courses that emphasize computation and bioinformatics. “Our idea is to link lab work with bioinformatic methods,” Christensen explained. “We want our students to learn how to search genomic and proteomic databases and use the output to design and interpret their own experiments.”

An Alabama company that provides flowers, herbs, vegetables and other gardening items to customers such as Lowe’s and Wal-Mart has announced plans to locate a growing and distribution facility in Springfield.

Bonnie Plant Farm will utilize a 20,000-s.f. building that once housed Carolina Greenhouse and plans to add another 100,000-s.f. of greenhouse space. The company anticipates hiring about a dozen full-time workers and 30 to 35 seasonal workers.

 “The jobs will be a great addition to our community, which has a solid base of agriculture,” said Hal B. Goode, executive director of the Springfield-Washington County Economic Development Authority, “and Bonnie Plant’s slogan of ‘Going Greener for You’ is a perfect fit in Springfield and Washington County.”

Production is expected to begin in December or January. The facility will ship plants to more than 350 stores in central Kentucky, southern Indiana and southern Ohio.

Ford Motor Co. has announced that it will be investing hundreds of millions of dollars to retool its two Louisville assembly plants as part of the company’s aggressive restructuring strategy.

“This is a major turnaround for Louisville, considering that Ford announced the Louisville Assembly Plant was slated for closure,” Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson said. “It’s taken a lot of hard work by Ford’s leadership, its workforce, the commonwealth and the city, but this century-old partnership has once again saved jobs and brought new investment to Louisville.”

The company announced late last month that it will manufacture a new, fuel-efficient car for the U.S. market at the revamped Louisville Assembly Plant by 2011, and the company will move production of the Navigator and Expedition from its  Michigan Truck Plant in Wayne, Mich., to the Kentucky Truck Plant, starting in the first quarter of 2009.

Ford officials have not yet disclosed what new car will be manufactured at the Louisville Assembly Plant, but have said it will be small and fuel-efficient in response to the public’s demand for more efficient cars. The retooling is slated for 2010.

Cannon Automotive Solutions Inc. has opened a new 59,500-s.f. manufacturing plant in Bowling Green’s Kentucky Transpark that is expected to create 100 full-time jobs within the first five years of operations.

The facility will manufacture individual component stampings for frames to be installed in the 2009 next-generation Ford F-150 pickup truck.

Ronald Truant, vice president of Cannon’s parent company, The Electromac Group, said Bowling Green’s location along the I-65 corridor was a major factor in the company’s decision to locate there.

“The geographic location of Bowling Green provides convenient access to our customers in the central and southern states and is close enough for effective oversight by our management and engineering teams in southwestern Ontario,” Truant said.

Cannon is the second manufacturing company to locate at the Kentucky Transpark in the past year; American Howa Kentucky Inc. celebrated its grand opening in March. According to data interpolated by the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce, Cannon will produce a total economic impact of more than $2.6 million each year in terms of direct, supplier and consumer revenues.

Rancho Poultry, a joint venture between two McDonald’s suppliers, has announced plans to locate a $43 million chicken processing facility in Lebanon that will create approximately 250 jobs for the area.

Rancho Poultry is a joint partnership between Keystone Foods of Pennsylvania, and Lopez Foods of Oklahoma and is major supplier of processed chicken to restaurants and food stores. The company’s major clients include McDonald’s and Wal-Mart.

Rancho Poultry plans to construct a 100,000 s.f. facility on 25 acres in Lebanon. Two processing lines will be installed that will be capable of producing 60 million pounds of partially cooked, battered and breaded chicken products. An additional third product line is already being considered by the company, which would add an additional 50 jobs.

The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority granted final approval to Rancho Poultry in June for tax benefits up to $7.5 million under the Kentucky Rural Economic Development Act, a program designed to increase manufacturing employment in the state.

Cutbacks and changes in production at the nation’s auto companies is continuing to impact the industry’s suppliers, with one of the most recent hits coming at Dana Corp.

The Ohio-based company, which just emerged from bankruptcy late last year, has announced plans to lay off 260 employees at its plant in Elizabethtown and 103 positions at its Owensboro facility.

Dana’s Elizabethtown plant produces frames for Ford’s F-150 pick-up truck, while the Owensboro facility manufactures frames for the Toyota Tundra pick-up and Sequoia SUV. Both Ford and Toyota are decreasing production for their trucks and large SUVs in response to market demand for smaller, more fuel-efficient models.

The layoffs will leave the Elizabethtown plant with only one shift of 475 workers; Owensboro will have about 234.

Kentucky Trailer has announced that it is moving its operations to a new location in the Jefferson Riverport as part of an expansion that represents an investment of $18.5 million over the next several years. The move will allow the company – which has been located on South Third Street in Louisville since 1936 – to retain its existing 286 jobs in Louisville and ultimately create 182 new manufacturing jobs. The expansion will result in a total annual payroll of $20 million.

Kentucky Trailer manufactures custom-built truck trailers for numerous industries, including moving and storage, snack food, package delivery, auto transport, mobile medical, mobile command and other custom-designed uses. It also has a Louisville Division, Kentucky Trailer Services, that provides trailer repair and refurbish services, after-market parts sales and used trailer sales.

The company expects to be operational in the new facility by March 2009.
In addition, Kentucky Trailer has reached an agreement with the University of Louisville to sell its existing site to the University of Louisville Foundation for future campus expansions. U of L President James Ramsey called the agreement a “major milestone for the University of Louisville,” noting that “it opens the door for a dramatic transformation as our Belknap campus grows from 287 acres to nearly 320 acres.”

“This was a truly unique win all around for our local economy with Kentucky Trailer being able to modernize and expand local operations, maintain and grow jobs, as well as find the perfect buyer for their current property,” Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson said.

Ashland Inc. has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase Hercules Inc. for $3.3 billion in a transaction that will create a major global specialty chemicals company.

Delaware-based Hercules is a leader in specialty additives and ingredients that modify the physical properties of water-based systems and is one of the world’s leading suppliers of specialty chemicals to the pulp and paper industry. Ashland, headquartered in Covington, Ky., manufactures specialty chemicals, is a leading distributor of chemicals and plastics, and a provider of automotive lubricants, car-care products and quick-lube services.

Upon the transaction’s close, which is expected by the end of the year, Ashland will have pro forma combined revenue for the 12 months ended Mar. 31, 2008, of more than $10 billion, including approximately $3.5 billion generated outside North America.

Ashland Chairman and Chief Executive Officer James J. O’Brien said, “The acquisition of Hercules fulfills our objective to become a leading specialty chemicals company. It creates a defined core for Ashland composed of three specialty chemical businesses with strong market positions and promising global growth potential: specialty additives and ingredients, paper and water technologies, and specialty resins. In addition, we expect our financial profile to be enhanced significantly through reduced earnings volatility, improved profitability and stronger cash flow generation.”

Ashland expects to realize annualized run-rate cost savings of at least $50 million by the third year following the transaction’s close by eliminating redundancies and capturing operational efficiencies. However, O’Brien said the company plans to maintain a “significant presence” in Wilmington, Del., where Hercules is headquartered.

The United States Playing Card Co., the company that produces well-known lines of playing cards such as Bicycle and Aviator, will invest more than $30 million over the next two years to establish a new manufacturing, distribution and headquarters campus in Boone County.

The company, which has been located in the Greater Cincinnati city of Norwood, Ohio, since 1901, will relocate to a 570,000-s.f. facility previously used by Gap as a distribution center.

“To continue to compete in the global marketplace over the next 100 years, it was obvious we needed to modernize our equipment and facilities,” said USPC President Phil Dolci. “Over the course of the last year, we conducted an exhaustive search in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky for a new location that would position us to retain our employees and provide the best platform to serve our global customer base in the most efficient manner. The Northern Kentucky location uniquely offers an easily accessible campus for our employees, who live throughout the region, and an existing facility to position us to immediately expand and improve operations and with capacity for future expansion.”

With the project involving more than 500 employees, USPC will be one of the 10 largest manufacturers in the Northern Kentucky region.

The Boone County campus will also serve as the headquarters for Loew-Cornell, a supplier of arts and crafts products that is owned by USPC’s parent company, Jarden Branded Consumables. Loew-Cornell will be moving its corporate functions to Boone County from Englewood, N.J.

USPC will continue to have operations in Cincinnati, including a display of the company’s museum of historical playing cards dating back to the 14th century.

INFAC Corporation, a producer and worldwide supplier of mechanical cables and electronics components for the automotive industry, has announced plans to locate a distribution and sales center in Taylor County. 

The project, which will employ approximately 75 people within two years of operation, will support North American original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). 

The South Korean-owned company expects to begin manufacturing emergency brake cables at its 52,500-s.f. facility, located in the Campbellsville Industrial Park, in the fourth quarter of 2008. The building previously housed Fleetwood Enterprises, a California-based company that closed its Campbellsville plant last year.
“This community has a lot to offer a business like ours,” said Jay Choi, director of North American Operations, INFAC Corp. “There are three fundamental reasons why INFAC Corp. chose the Campbellsville-Taylor County site – geography, resources and atmosphere. It is centrally located among the majority of the U.S. auto manufacturers, offers available facilities and workforce familiar with the automotive markets and it just feels safe here.” 

INFAC, established in 1969 in Ansan, Korea, also operates seven manufacturing plants in Korea, China, India and Turkey and has affiliates in Japan and Europe.
The Campbellsville project represents a capital investment of $500,000.

Dawahares, a 101-year-old family-owned clothing business that became a Kentucky institution, is closing its doors for good.

In late May, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. At that time, company officials said they were closing nine stores that were not profitable, but were confident the reorganization would put the company back on track. Unfortunately, as proceedings moved forward, Dawahares was unable to obtain the loans necessary to complete the restructuring.

“Our goal was to produce and to implement a plan which would allow the company to keep the 22 stores open, and ultimately to be able to satisfy our secured, and possibly some other creditors,” said President Harding Dawahare. “Unfortunately, after a month of trying to make this plan work to the satisfaction of our bank (Fifth Third) and other creditors, we realized our only option was to take this action. We are distressed – for our employees, our family, and for the thousands of loyal customers who have relied on Dawahare’s stores for clothing for their entire family for up to three generations. However, we hope to be able to exit the retail arena in Kentucky the way our family entered it a century ago – with dignity.”

Some 400 Dawahares employees will be affected, in addition to the 107 positions that were lost with the first round of store closings.

The Southeast Kentucky Economic Development Corp. (SKED) has received a Rural Business Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that will enable SKED to provide one-on-one technical assistance to business owners in 20 eastern Kentucky counties.

SKED will use the $99,000 Rural Business Enterprise Grant to provide business readiness assessments, consulting and counseling, loan packaging and resource and referral.

“With these USDA funds, SKED will be able to expand its already extensive mission by putting invaluable professional consulting resources and important business analyses directly into the hands of local companies,” Fifth District Congressman Hal Rogers said. “In a global economy, our industry leaders must stay ahead of the curve and constantly innovate with new techniques and business plans to bolster operations. This assistance translates into job creation and business growth for the citizens of southern and eastern Kentucky.”

SKED, a 22-year-old, non-profit, economic development organization based in Somerset, serves a 42-county region in southeast Kentucky. Staff works with business owners, small and large, throughout the region to identify financing solutions to fund their location, expansion and working capital needs.

The Internal Revenue Service has announced an increase in the optional standard mileage rates for the final six months of 2008.

Taxpayers may use the optional standard rates to calculate the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business, charitable, medical or moving purposes.
Effective July 1, 2008, the rates increased to 58.5 cents per mile for all business miles driven between July 1 and Dec. 31. The new rate reflects an increase of eight cents from the 50.5 cent rate applicable for the first six months of 2008.

The IRS typically updates mileage rates once a year in the fall for the next calendar year, but made a special adjustment this year due to the increasing cost of gasoline.

The optional business standard mileage rate is used to compute the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business use in lieu of tracking actual costs. This rate is also used as a benchmark by the federal government and many businesses to reimburse their employees for mileage.

The new six-month rate for computing deductible medical or moving expenses will also increase by eight cents to 27 cents a mile, up from 19 cents for the first six months of 2008. The rate for providing services for charitable organizations is set by statute, not the IRS, and remains at 14 cents a mile. Taxpayers also have the option of calculating their actual costs rather than using the standard mileage rates.

Kentucky’s state government has launched a new round of funding for its highly successful Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants, a matching fund program that is unique to Kentucky.
“This means that small, high-tech companies in Kentucky, and those who are looking to relocate to our state, can potentially double their federal grant awards,” Gov. Steve Beshear said. “We’ve already seen the positive results of this program with more than $7 million awarded to 31 companies.”

One such company, Transposagen Biopharmaceuticals, relocated this year from Philadelphia to Lexington after receiving a $1.3 million federal SBIR grant and $1 million in matching funds from Kentucky.

“In economically difficult times like we face today, Kentucky must seek a more diverse workforce and the companies that bring these jobs here,” Beshear said. Beshear noted that companies like Alltech, with its recently opened Center for Animal Nutrigenomics, Kentucky BioProcessing in Owensboro, Coldstream Laboratories, Advanced Cancer Therapeutics and Scout Diagnostics are prime examples of how Kentucky can move forward in the bio-tech field.

More information about Kentucky’s SBIR-STTR Matching Funds is available a www.ThinkKentucky.com/dci/sbir1.