Regional Briefs
Cumbies Coming: This spring Cumberland Farms and Gulf Oil will jointly move their headquarters and 400 employees to 100 Crossing Blvd. in the Route 9/I-90 Corporate Center Park in Framingham. Cumberland Farms was headquartered in Canton while Gulf Oil was based in Newton.
Low Hopes: The Associated Industries of Massachusetts’ Business Confidence Index hit an all-time low in December. AIM reported that the index dropped 5.5 points to 36.3 during the month. The index hit 53.5 in Dec. 2007.
EMC Layoffs: Hopkinton-based EMC Corp. said it would reduce its workforce by 2,400 workers, or 7 percent of its staff, over the next 18 months. Six hundred of those workers will come from its Massachusetts’ facilities. The Hopkinton-based data storage company has 42,000 workers worldwide, with 9,000 in Massachusetts.
Wholesale Sale: The building at 100 Southbridge St. in Auburn has been sold for $800,000. According to Worcester commercial real estate firm Kelleher & Sadowsky Associates Inc., the 16,320-square-foot building was sold by R&R Realty Trust to Wholesale Property Co. LLC, the Dayton, Ohio-based owner of WinNelson Co., the plumbing supply company that occupies the building.
Makeover: The Natick accounting firm of Sullivan Shuman & Freedberg LLC has merged into Rhode Island-based Kahn, Litwin, Renza & Co. Ltd. The Natick firm will become KLR’s third office. KLR has offices in Providence and Newport, R.I. The addition of 35 employees from Sullivan Shuman will bring KLR’s total headcount to 160, according to KLR Managing Director Alan Litwin.
Engineering Space: A New Hampshire-based environmental engineering firm has leased nearly 5,000 square feet at Cedar Hill Place in Marlborough. The firm, Comprehensive Environmental Inc., is based in Merrimack, N.H., and specializes in stormwater and wastewater engineering, according to New Dover Associates, a Framingham-based commercial real estate firm and Cedar Hill Place’s exclusive leasing agent.
It’s Educational: The YWCA of Central Massachusetts has been awarded a $343,905 grant from the state’s Workforce Competitiveness Trust Fund. The grant will help the Worcester-based YWCA develop a pool of qualified early childhood teachers by working with local high school students interested in pursuing college degrees in early childhood education and related fields.
For Sale: Staples Inc. of Framingham said it would make a public offering of the company’s senior notes in order to pay off debt related its commercial paper program, a 2008 credit line and for general corporate purposes.
Sold: A 4,300-square-foot industrial building at 91 Creeper Hill Rd. in Grafton has been sold for $490,000. The building, which sits on 1.16 acres was purchased by rubbish removal company Service Plus Disposal of Worcester from DLH Realty Trust and its trustee Michael J. Rizzo.
Unlabeled: Ohio-based label company Multi-Color Corp. will close a Framingham plant, putting 62 people out of work. The company said it will consolidate its heat transfer label manufacturing facility in Framingham into its other facilities elsewhere. Final plant closure will talk place within the next several months.
Bright Spot: Boxborough-based Crossbeam Systems Inc. said it saw 56 percent growth in 2008 compared to the previous year as the company signed 49 new clients and expanded at several existing clients. The network security company said new clients in 2008 included Baylor University, Del Monte Foods, John Hancock, T-Mobile and others.
Desirable Discounts: Natick-based BJ’s Wholesale Club reported a 3.2 percent December sales increase to $1.06 billion from $1.03 billion in the same month a year ago. The discounter’s same-store sales increased by 1.6 percent during the month as sales totals took a 4.3 percent hit from cheap gasoline.
Dreary Discounts: Discount retailer TJX Cos. Inc. of Framingham said its December sales results were down 3 percent compared to the same month the prior year. Sales for December hit $2.37 billion compared to $2.43 billion the year before. Same-store sales were flat compared to the previous year, the company said.
Stents O’ The Irish: Natick-based Boston Scientific Corp. has acquired Irish coronary stent company Labcoat Limited. Labcoat is a private company that has developed a drug-eluting stent that uses droplets of a biodegradable polymer combined with drugs to create a thin coating on the outside of the stent.
Patented Security: S2 Security Corp. of Framingham has been awarded a patent that covers the architecture of its entire product line. The company develops network-based security systems for access control, alarm monitoring, temperature monitoring, video and intercom.
Trading Down: American exports hit $142.8 billion in November as imports to the United States declined by $25 billion to $183.2 billion, resulting in a trade deficit of $40.4 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. The deficit is down from $56.7 billion in October. November exports were $8.7 billion less than October’s exports of $151.5 billion.
Slippery Situation: After a month running a Dedham restaurant, Boylston-based Owl Power Co.’s vegetable oil-powered electricity generation system is ready for prime time, the company says. The Vegawatt system is a co-generation system aimed at restaurants and food service facilities. It uses waste vegetable oil to generate on-site electricity and hot water. The company says the Vegawatt is fully automated and requires no maintenance or intervention by restaurant staff.
D.C. Data: Westborough-based eClinicalWorks’ software will power a wide-ranging system for the Children’s National Medical Center of Washington, D.C. The eClinicalWorks electronic medical records and practice management systems will be at the center of an effort to connect pediatricians to the medical center. The system will also connect public schools, foster care programs, mobile medical vans, state immunization registries, laboratories and other health care providers.
Motoring: Devens-based American Superconductor Corp. said it and Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp. successfully tested a 49,000-horsepower superconductor ship propulsion motor for the U.S. Navy. The electric motor produces 36.5 megawatts of power, twice as powerful as any motor the Navy has ever tested, and is intended for use in large Navy combat ships. The motor was built under contract with the Office of Naval Research to demonstrate how electric motors can be used as the primary propulsion technology for future Navy ships.
Devalued: Hopkinton-based Alseres Pharmaceuticals Inc. has 30 days to comply with the Nasdaq’s market value, stockholder’s equity and net income requirements or be delisted. The company was in violation because its market value dropped below $35 million for 10 consecutive days. Alseres also sold 1 million shares of common stock for $1 per share to Robert Gipson, an investor and former member of the company’s board of directors, to raise money for R&D and general expenses.
Getting Rusty: Falling prices and demand pushed shipments from American factories down 5.3 percent to $393.8 billion in November, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. New orders for goods manufactured in the United States fell 4.6 percent to $384.6 billion during the same period.
Why Not Wyoming: Devens-based American Superconductor Corp. said it has received an order from one of the largest electricity generation and transmission cooperatives in the country. The Basin Electric Power Cooperative will use AMSC’s D-VAR system to support an electricity transmission system near Wright, Wyo.
All For Science: The Massachusetts Life Science Center Collaborative, a coalition of industry and academic leaders, is asking the state’s U.S. representatives and senators to add more funding for the National Institutes of Health to any upcoming economic stimulus package that comes before them. In a letter, the collaborative says that each NIH dollar is doubled in economic output, pointing to the NIH research budget of $22.8 billion in 2007, which had an economic impact of $50.5 billion.
Frozen Assets: Communities that want help from the state in recovering from December’s ice storm must submit their requests by the end of the month. According to a statement from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, the state Emergency Board can authorize emergency spending loans for up to two years.
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