Manufacturing

It's hard to hear Drew Greenblatt over the steady - and deafening - ka-chink, ka-chunk of machines snipping steel wire at his factory in Southwest Baltimore. So he turns it up a notch. "That's for Baxter," he hollers, pointing to a giant box full of special-ordered wire baskets ready to be shipped to the drugmaker. Nearby, an employee welds wire for biotech bigwig Amgen Inc. as Greenblatt ticks off a Who's Who list of his other pharmaceutical customers: Pfizer, Roche, Novartis. It is a client roster that is nothing like the one he had when he bought the business - Marlin Steel Wire Products - in 1998 and focused on selling metal baskets to bagel shops for displaying their products.

Blame fuel costs, not deregulation Electricity costs have increased in all regions - those that have restructured their electricity markets, such as Maryland, and those that have elected to maintain the old, regulatory approach. So it is an overly simplistic assessment for Jay Hancock to point to rising electricity prices in Maryland and assert that the state's restructured power market is to blame ("High electricity costs hurting Md. manufacturers, jobs," May 9). Nationally, the cost increases for other forms of energy used by consumers have far surpassed the percentage cost increases for electricity.

WASHINGTON -- Factory orders for big-ticket goods posted the largest decline in more than seven years in February, the government reported yesterday, a sign that an anticipated recovery in U.S. manufacturing could be a few months away."

A KEY GAUGE of U.S. manufacturing activity moved higher in August, the nation's purchasing managers reported last week, underscoring a strong rebound in the industrial sector that had been hit hard over the past year amid weak export demand.The National Association of Purchasing Management said its manufacturing index rose to 54.2 in August from 53.4 in July. A reading above 50 signals factory-sector growth. Manufacturing is being driven by a revival of overseas economies and continued strength in the domestic economy.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. manufacturing grew in April for the third month in a row, and personal income and spending and construction spending all rose in March, a series of economic reports showed yesterday."

A struggling, 110-year-old glass manufacturer that employs 300 will remain open in Baltimore after the Abell Foundation made an undisclosed investment to save it.The Carr-Lowrey Glass Co., which makes glass containers for cosmetics and perfumes at a plant at 2201 Kloman St., had been searching for a buyer for months before the Abell Foundation stepped in, said K. Wayne Long, vice chairman of the company's board."

Forum forged innovative ideas to revive manufacturingThe bad news is that the Baltimore region lags behind 17 similar metro areas. ("Manufacturing jobs below many cities, but holding steady," Nov. 12).The good news is that a panel of key leaders of industry, government, education and labor came together at the Regional Manufacturing Institute's Points of View forum Nov. 11 to discuss the future of manufacturing in this region.They agreed that through collaboration, increased promotion of the new technological face of manufacturing, and a renewed spirit for change, the region's manufacturing base can be expanded.

The auto industry faces a bumpy road as its cruises into 1999.New-car sales are expected to gear down. High-profit used cars could be in short supply. Each of the domestic manufacturers has to negotiate a new national contract with the United Auto Workers.On the bright side, at least for new-car buyers: Prices are expected to remain essentially unchanged or fall.In Baltimore, anxiety levels are likely to run high as 3,100 workers at the local General Motors Corp. van assembly plant -- who face a scheduled production slowdown and an undetermined number of layoffs this spring -- await word on whether or not the Broening Highway factory, the city's largest manufacturing employer, will close for good.

On the eve of a hard-fought primary election for mayor, The Sun's editorial page staff decided to look beyond the gloomy statistics that so often are used to characterize Baltimore.Members of the staff fanned out across the City to examine how Baltimoreans live, work and play -- at all hours of the day and night. Here's what they saw:6 a.m., Broening HighwayThe day dawns with thunder and lightning in southeast Baltimore -- a storm brewing inside 2122 Broening Highway, with the clatter of metal against metal and sparks flying.

Baltimore still ranks lower than most other cities surveyed by the Greater Baltimore Alliance when it comes to manufacturing jobs, although for the most part the area held steady throughout the past year, according to a study released yesterday."

The $789 billion stimulus doesn't fix what ails the economy and is doomed to fail. Since 2007, the private sector has shed 6.6 million jobs - half in manufacturing and construction. A couple hundred thousands government employees have been added, but that hasn't affected the overall trend. During the last economic boom, a huge structural trade deficit emerged in the United States. Imports exceeded exports by about $700 billion annually from 2005 to 2008. By the end of the boom, nearly all of it was manufactured goods from China and oil. The failure to compensate for imported consumer goods and gasoline with exports creates a huge shortage of demand for U.S.-made products.

Hemorrhaging jobs - 5.6 million in a year - gets one focused on how we can stop this carnage. I was part of a blitz of 350 U.S. factory owners and managers who spent two days last week meeting with members of Congress to share with them some ideas on how we can reverse this trend and get back to growing manufacturing jobs in the United States. The U.S. manufacturing industry is still the biggest in the world; we want to keep it that way. Despite common misperception, our manufacturers ship more than China.

Biopharmaceutical company Shire plans to close its Owings Mills plant in phases over three years and lay off 260 workers as it discontinues in-house manufacturing of drugs to treat attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorders and gastrointestinal diseases, a company spokesman said Thursday. Shire plans to outsource the work at the plant, with medications to be made instead in North Carolina by a contract manufacturer. Shire decided to close the plant as it moves away from in-house manufacturing, said Matt Cabrey, the spokesman.

In the 1976 movie Network, anchorman Howard Beale, played by Peter Finch, famously bellowed, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more." Today, rather than stick his head out a window and scream, he might have created a Web site instead, like Mike Vallerie, a businessman in Baltimore, just did. Vallerie, who owns a trailer rental and storage business in South Baltimore, has, by his estimate and to little avail, written more than a hundred letters to members of Congress and to newspaper editors, who typically want him to trim his loquaciousness to 800 words or less.

Environmentalists, manufacturers and union leaders have hammered out their differences over state climate-change legislation, clearing the way for a compromise measure after two years of contentious debate, Maryland's top environmental official said yesterday. Environment Secretary Shari T. Wilson said representatives of industry, labor and environmental groups sent a letter to Gov. Martin O'Malley urging him to introduce the "delicate balance" to which they have agreed. It would commit the state to reducing climate-warming pollution 25 percent by 2020, but it would not require any reductions from the state's manufacturing plants unless mandated by the federal government or by some multistate action.

In the 1960s, millions of Americans bought their first homes without subprime lending. Over the last 20 years, that became almost impossible. Why? One factor has been the decline of the much-traveled road from poverty to lower middle class and then higher - to homeownership, college for the children and a funded retirement. That path was a good job in basic manufacturing, making steel, paper, even iPods. Now these things are made abroad. The United States has lost millions of manufacturing jobs.

Largest U.S. producer of chicken files Ch. 11 MILWAUKEE : Pilgrim's Pride Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday, hurt like other meat producers by volatile feed prices and slumping demand but also hobbled by an unmanageable debt load. The Pittsburg, Texas-based company, the nation's largest chicken producer, sought protection in a filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas, saying that as of Sept. 27 it had $3.75 billion in assets and $2.72 billion in debts.

A few months after General Motors made its last van at the 70-year-old Broening Highway plant, a seed for Maryland's new economy sprouted across town in West Baltimore. On a cold morning in October 2005, the governor and mayor heralded the opening of a biopark built by the University of Maryland, Baltimore - a place where researchers would pursue breakthroughs in treatments for diabetes, cancer and heart disease. One of the park's first tenants was a Japanese medical firm. Officials toasted the partnership with sake.

Paul Reed Smith Guitars, the Eastern Shore company that makes guitars for Carlos Santana and other well-known musicians, has received a $10 million private equity bond from the state to help pay for a major expansion of its headquarters, company and economic development leaders said yesterday. The bond, which is tax-exempt and provides the company with a low interest rate for repaying the loan, will be used to help finance an 84,000-square-foot addition to the company's manufacturing facility at the Chesapeake Bay Business Park in Stevensville.

Towson-based Black & Decker Corp. said yesterday that net earnings fell 18 percent in the second quarter as a sharp downturn in home construction and remodeling continued to hurt sales. The maker of power tools and hardware products reported net earnings of $96.7 million, or $1.58 per diluted share, compared with earnings of $118 million, or $1.75 per share, for the second quarter of 2007. Second-quarter sales fell 3 percent to $1.6 billion, the company said. The decrease included a positive 5 percent impact from foreign currency translation.