Dole starts road show

Dole Foods is taking its act on the road.

The California company announced today that it has started the road show, where it begins courting the Wall Street money managers who will buy its initial public offering of stock.

Dole, which sells fresh as well as packaged fruit and vegetables, told regulators that the company will sell 35.7 million shares. It expects the shares to price between $13 and $15 each, and hopes to raise about $575 million, according to a regulatory filing last week. Shares will trade under the sticker symbol DOLE on the New York Stock Exchange.

David Murdock, the company’s chairman and chief executive, is its principal shareholder. The 86-year-old also is the driving force behind the N.C. Research Campus, the 350-acre life-science campus in Kannapolis.

The campus, the site of the former Pillowtex textile mill, is focused on health, nutrition and agriculture. Work there has slowed along with the economy, and earlier this year the campus lost a major tenant, contract researcher PPD of Wilmington.

But Murdock told a meeting of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce recently that he expects to add three buildings over the next 12 months as the economy improves, according to a report in the Salisbury Post.