Plans to split company in two: Sara Lee will sell its North American refrigerated dough business to Ralcorp for $545 million, the company says, as it moves closer to splitting itself into two separate entities. Sara Lee Corp. has been selling off parts of itself for years and announced in January that it would split its remaining businesses in two by early 2012, with one company focused on coffee and the other largely focused on meat. The company announced in May that it was shopping around its refrigerated dough business and its international bakery operations. With the sale to Ralcorp Frozen Bakery Products Inc., Sara Lee will shed a unit that makes private label toaster pastries, crescent rolls, pizza and pie crusts, and basic and specialty biscuits that are packaged and sold to retailers.
Heavy equipment must trim consumption: Fire trucks and concrete mixers, semis, heavy-duty pickups and all trucks in between will, for the first time, have to trim fuel consumption and emissions of heat-trapping gases under new efficiency standards announced today by President Barack Obama. The White House said the standards will save businesses billions of dollars in fuel costs, help reduce oil consumption and cut air pollution. The standards apply to vehicle model years 2014 to 2018. The new targets affect three categories of vehicles. Big rigs or semis will have to slash fuel consumption and production of heat-trapping gases by up to 23%. Gasoline-powered heavy-duty pickups and vans will have to cut consumption by 10%, or by 15% if the vehicles run on diesel fuel. The standards also prescribe a 9% reduction in fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions for work trucks, which include everything from fire trucks and concrete mixers to garbage trucks and buses. In a statement, Obama said the new standards had the support of companies that build, buy and drive medium and heavy-duty trucks.
