Business Markets

Take a handful of tenacious farmers, add some innovation and a smidge of cooperation, and you have the secret to Michigan’s small yet growing cranberry industry.

While the state remains a niche player, family farms are capitalizing on opportunities to boost business. Consumer interest in healthy foods as well as in buying from Michigan companies has spurred new sales avenues for the little bulbous berry.

One example is the partnership between the Michigan Cranberry Co. and supermarkets such as Hiller’s Market, Meijer Inc., Kroger Co. and Whole Foods Market Inc. This fall marked the first year Wally and Sharon Huggett sold fresh cranberries directly to a retailer, thanks in part to a request from Hiller’s to supply Michigan cranberries to its stores for the holiday season.

“It’s a win-win for everyone,” said Wally Huggett, a semiretired sod farmer who has the largest cranberry operation in the state with about 220 acres producing 3 million pounds of cranberries annually in Cheboygan County.

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The Times tracks several quarterly commodity prices to give consumers a snapshot in time of the agriculture industry.

Included are milk, hay, potatoes and oats.

Minnesota has a strong dairy presence, and hay is an important factor in the operation of any farm with animals.

Potatoes are a staple of the food industry, and oats are consumed by people and animals.

The Times tracks the price of corn and soybeans daily.

Inflation

Inflation was in effect in all four commodities in the agricultural snapshot for 2011.

While the price was not yet final for December, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, the price of potatoes increased more than 55 percent to an average of $11.34 per 100 pounds.

That was largely because of a July spike in the price, which had dropped back below $8 through November.

Oats also took a healthy jump, with the price per bushel rising 45 percent to $3.11.

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An iconic London landmark, the Battersea Power Station, is now up for sale after Real Estate Opportunities the Irish developers were forced by investors after admitting they couldn’t repay over £502 million of debt on the project. Ernst and Young were appointed last December to recoup monies to repay investors, which include the Irish super bank, NAMA as well as the now nationalised Lloyds Bank and Victor Hwang, a Malaysian property tycoon.

The agents Knight Frank Rutley, better known as agents of choice to landowners and celebrities for selling their multimillion pound country estates have been appointed to find a buyer for London’s prime redevelopment opportunity.

The Battersea Power Station covers over 400 acres of prime development land next to the Thames. The

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Pub chain JD Wetherspoon enjoyed some Christmas sales cheer but its chairman warned expansion plans may be scaled back in the face of more tax hikes.

The chain, which operates some 850 pubs, is on track to open 50 sites in the year to July but future openings may slow drastically if the Chancellor presses ahead with planned increases in duty.

Chairman Tim Martin has called on George Osborne to scrap the rises in alcohol duty, which have been going up above the rate of inflation in recent years and will wait for the Chancellors Budget speech before deciding whether the current rate of expansion can continue.

He highlighted parts of the West Midlands as evidence of the impact on the pub sector.

Meanwhile, the chain said that like-for-like sales in the 12 weeks to January 15 increased 3.6 per cent, which was up from 1.1% in the previous quarter.

Mr Martin said: If taxes continue to rise, we will have to look closely at our expansion plans.

We are already paying too much duty and its not a viable proposition for the Government to punish pubs in this way.

Its driving people away from pubs and its bad for jobs.

You just have to drive around Wolverhampton, Stoke or the suburbs of Birmingham to see the devastation wrought on the sector as a whole.

The most recent figures were flattered by comparisons with a weaker performance in the previous December when Arctic blizzards kept people at home.

The group said its profit margins fell in the second quarter of its financial year as it struggled to pass on the rising cost of VAT, alcohol duty, and higher food and drink costs to cash-strapped consumers.

Mr Martin, who started the chain in 1979, also pointed out that supermarkets have an unfair advantage over pubs because they do not to have to pay VAT on food sales, which went up last year to 20 per cent.

He claimed this allows them to subsidise beer and steal sales from the pub industry.

Pubs have been closing at a rate of about 14 a week between December 2010 and June, according to figures from campaign group Camra.

The sector has suffered in the wake of the smoking ban and as the squeeze in consumer spending sees more people buy cheap drink from supermarkets.

Its outspoken chairman said Wetherspoon has been the pre-eminent pub company in recent years, helped by its aim of providing reasonable prices.

Wetherspoon has been opening about 50 pubs a year recently and created some 2,800 jobs in its last financial year.

Mr Martin said the combination of tax rises and increases from breweries meant the price of a pint in Wetherspoon pubs rose four per cent or five per cent to an average of about £2.40 over the past year.

But he said another rise in duty would help push prices across the industry up by 10p to 15p this year, although it was too early to say how much prices in Wetherspoon would rise.

Online and off, one the most important services I am often engaged to perform is the development of a positioning strategy for small to medium size businesses.

A positioning strategy is not simply a cleaver slogan but a powerful and dynamic stand that your brand takes in your category. Right now as you read this, I believe that you are sitting on something that would absolutely position you as the leader in your marketplace. All too often, we as small business people think that advertising an inspirational tagline, will draw in customers. But that really isn’t enough to make them engage you.

You have to been seen and believed to be a leader. Customers like to do business with leaders. Your position has to resonate with them. When was the last time you bought something based entirely on the slogan? We purchase all the time on our perception of their brand position all the time. T

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Workers on Sunday rejected a new contract that would have guaranteed a $225 million expansion at Timken Co.’s Faircrest steel plant in Canton.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The United Steelworkers union in Canton has rejected a new contract with industrial supplier Timken Co. that would have guaranteed a $225 million expansion of that company’s Faircrest steel plant.

Calls to the union were not immediately returned this morning, but the USW Local 1123′s voicemail confirmed that workers rejected the deal by a vote of 608-917.

Reached last month, the new contract would have offered signing bonuses and accelerated scheduled pay increases and would have run through 2017. The union’s contract with the company expires next year.

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John Richards’s Predictions for 2012

Since our previous predictions have proved fairly accurate, I am going to stick my neck out and give some fairly specific best-guesses for the next year. I must give the health warning that these are only extrapolations of present trends, and do not take account of currently unforeseeable events – which, of course, always occur.

First, the good news: the world as a whole should avoid a full recession in 2012 – emphasise the word should. All the bad news should not be allowed to obscure the fact that global business is growing, albeit slowly. Recovery from 2008 should not be expected to be spectacular, but it ought to continue, so long as everyone keeps their heads.

Alas, the bad news is that they are unlikely to keep them in Europe. The latest scheme to save the euro, FU (Fiscal Union), does not address its underlying problems. I pre

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