Progress Energy and Duke Energy have agreed to sign more contracts for solar power as they continue looking to buy electricity generated from swine waste and poultry waste.

The utilities' proposal with industry lobbying organizations is intended to buy time for the two North Carolina electric utilities to contract for power generated from this state's abundant agricultural wastes.

Raleigh-based Progress and Charlotte-based Duke signed their agreement with the N.C. Sustainable Energy Association, N.C. Farm Bureau, N.C. Pork Council and the N.C. Poultry Federation. The N.C. Utilities Commission, which has the authority to approve or reject the proposal, has scheduled a hearing for next month.

The companies have warned they will be unable to meet state-imposed mandates this year and in 2013 on contracting for green power generated from poultry and hog waste. The main problems are lack of operating facilities and high costs for such energy sources that are still regarded as experimental.

Former workers of Townsends, the Delaware-based poultry processing company that filed for bankruptcy in late 2010, have been awarded a settlement that will pay 859 North Carolina employees for unpaid vacation time.
 
The settlement awards $157,000 to the company's Pittsboro and Siler City workers. The workers were represented in a class action lawsuit by the N.C. Justice Center and the Delaware law firm Margolis Edelstein.
 
Townsends filed for bankruptcy in December 2010 and closed its operations two months later.

The company's North Carolina assets were then acquired by a Ukrainian billionaire, Oleg Bakhmatyuk, for $24.9 million in February 2011.

Omtron, the U.S. shell corporation Bakhmatyuk created, spent $7 million upgrading the Siler City plant. But Omtron abruptly announced in late July that it would close the facilities in Siler City and Mocksville by Oct. 4 and lay off 1,156 workers.

At the time, Townsends also had contracts with nearly 200 chicken farmers in Chatham, Moore, Randolph and Harnett counties.

Omtron still owns the Townsends facilities.

The $157,000 settlement will be distributed among the workers based on how much vacation time they were owed by the company.

Any workers who worked for the Siler City or Pittsboro Townsends plants and lost their jobs between January 5 and February 25, 2011, were not paid owed vacation pay, and have not received a settlement payment should contact Jessica Rocha at the NC Justice Center at 866-446-8398.

North Carolina's power suppliers, awash in solar energy and other clean resources, said today they will not be able to meet a state mandate this year for generating electricity from two of the state's most abundant renewable resources: swine waste and poultry waste. 

The organizations, including Progress Energy and Duke Energy, said they have fallen behind in efforts to sign contracts to buy power output from independent generators that burn or extract flammable gas from those agricultural animal wastes.

The power suppliers collectively asked the N.C. Utilities Commission for a delay to meet those green energy goals, saying the technologies are immature, the markets are not developed, and potential suppliers are inexperienced.

The filing was made by Raleigh-based Progress, Charlotte-based Duke, Richmond-based Dominion N.C. Power, GreenCo Solutions, Public Works Commission of Fayetteville, Tennessee Valley Authority as well as a number of rural electric cooperatives and municipal power agencies.

Garner-based Butterball will close its turkey facility in Longmont, Colorado at the end of the year and is seeks to lower operating costs in the face of rising feed prices.

"After long and careful consideration, amid record high ingredient costs, our company has come to the conclusion that we must take these steps in order to improve our overall effectiveness.” said Rod Brenneman, Butterball's CEO.

Brenneman said government ethanol subsidies and record high fuel prices for much of 2010 and 2011 contributed to a major increase in operating costs at the plant.

Brenneman took over as CEO earlier this month.

He is a 22-year veteran of Seaboard Corp. of Kansas, the holding company that acquired a 50 percent stake in Butterball in December. Maxwell Farms owns the other half of Butterball.

Brenneman warned in an interview earlier this month that Butterball, like all poultry and pork producers, needs to be more efficient and lower operating costs.

Pfizer announced this morning that it may sell its animal-health business, which employs more than 250 people in the Triangle.

The world's largest drugmaker will consider a sale or spin-off of its animal-health and nutrition divisions to focus more resources on expanding its pharmaceutical business.

The New York corporation could pick different strategies for each division, and doesn't expect to make any more announcements until sometime in 2012. Any transaction could take up to two years to complete.

The animal-health poultry division employs about 250 people in Durham and 20 more in Laurinburg.

Sanderson Farms search for a site for its next poultry-processing plant continues even as local opposition to the project goes to court to try to stop it.

The Mississippi company has not purchased any property and is still in discussions with the state Department of Commerce, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and local officials in Nash and Wayne counties, said Mike Cockrell, Sanderson's chief financial officer.

"We are still doing our due diligence," he said this week. "We haven't purchased any property yet."

The Nash County Board of Commissioners recently rezoned a site in southern Nash County that it hopes Sanderson will select.

Sanderson needs about 1,000 acres where it can build a processing plant and a spray field for the plant's treated wastewater.

The city of Wilson and more than 30 nearby property owners have filed a lawsuit against Nash County alleging that the rezoning violated state laws. 

Sanderson had originally focused its search on Wayne County but later expanded it farther north into Nash County.
 

Sanderson Farms, which is preparing to open one chicken-processing complex in Eastern North Carolina and looking for a site to put a second facility, reported weaker third-quarter sales and profit this morning.

The Mississippi-based company blamed higher production costs, and hot temperatures, which make it harder to for chickens to gain weight.

But executives told analysts on a conference call that the company is shipping chicken meat to Russia again. That country was a major chicken importer but banned U.S. imports last winter over safety concerns. CEO Joe Sanderson said he expects demand to be "spectacular."

Sanderson's shares rose on the report, climbing $2.64 to close at $45.80.

Butterball could have a new parent before Thanksgiving.

The world's largest turkey company, which moved its corporate headquarters to Garner in 2008, is a joint venture of Maxwell Farms and Smithfield Foods.

But Smithfield, which owns 49 percent of Butterball, isn't happy with the arrangement.

On Thursday, the company announced that it has offered about $200 million to buy Maxwell's 51 percent stake. If Maxwell isn't interested in selling, Smithfield plans to unload its share of Butterball. Smithfield wants a decision by mid-September.

Sanderson Farms plans to sell 2 million shares to pay for construction of its poultry processing plant under construction in Kinston and another new facility planned near Goldsboro.

The Mississippi-based company last summer revived plans for the $121 million processing campus in Kinston, left, including a new feed mill, poultry processing plant and hatchery.

On Monday, the company also announced plans to build a $94 million bird deboning facility near Goldsboro. That operation could employ up to 1,100 people and is scheduled to open in 2012.

Beyond standing back in open-mouthed awe, I have nothing I can add to this -- it pretty much speaks for itself. So rise and shine and play it loud.

(Thanks, Brian.)