Salt Industry News

Of the myriad businesses of the Cargill behemoth, the company has recognized as its top performing businesses Cargill Salt and Cargill Deicing Technology; they received the Cargill Business Excellence Award at the Cargill Leadership Forum and Recognition Conference recently held in Minneapolis.

In addition, Cargill's St. Clair, MI evap salt plant was named the "Best Plant" in the ~$70 billion corporate empire. As if that were not enough, Dr. Marty Aschauer, Cargill Salt's Director of Technical Services was honored with the Cargill Chairman's Leadership award.

Congratulations! Cargill's non-salt businesses probably viewed the awards with "shock and awe" and the trophy cases in Minnetonka, North Olmstead and St. Clair are bulging!!

The "Business Excellence Award" is presented to business units with outstanding demonstrated efforts in creating distinctive value through leadership, high performance, customer focus and innovation. There were a total of nine winners out of 79 business units. Cargil Salt and Cargill Deicing Technology were also winners of this award in 2004. No fluke here.

The "Best Plant" award is presented to the "top" plant demonstrating excellence in the areas of employee engagement, food safety, worker safety, customer satisfaction, product quality, process technologies and new product development.

Keep up the good work.

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 12:17 PM | Permalink

The federal Office of Management and Budget has reported the final annual budget deficit was cut from an earlier-estimated $423 billion to "only" $248 billion. Where did the extra $175 billion come from. Not from spending cuts; from increased tax revenues.

What gives? Congress just extended many of the Bush tax cuts. The answer is of more than passing interest for U.S. manufacturers, many of whom have been able to cut their effective tax rates, especially when a voter decision on November 8 could well install Rep Charles Rangel (D-NY) in the key power role of chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. Rangel has pledged to repeal the Bush tax cuts, stating that he "can't think of one" that should be extended. Pres. Bush has indicated his continued intent to have his tax cuts made permanent. So the election will make a difference.

With lower rates, Congressional budgeteers calculate, tax revenues will be reduced reflecting the lower marginal rates. "Static scoring" is the technical term. Contrast that to the alternative economic model, "dynamic scoring" whereby the model is tweaked to accept the possibility that reduced RATES will stimulate additional economic activity and generate new, additional amounts of revenue.

Well, if today's deficit news proves anything besides the fact that economics is still an inexact science, it is that dynamic scoring needs to become the operating procedure of the Congressional Budget Office.

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 08:41 PM | Permalink