North Charleston-based Ingevity Corporation (NYSE:NGVT) said Aug. 2, 2022, it has reached an agreement to acquire privately owned Ozark Materials, LLC and Ozark Logistics, LLC in an all-cash transaction valued at $325 million.

The acquisition is subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions, and Ingevity expects to close on the transaction by early Q4 2022.

Ozark Materials, LLC is a leading producer of pavement marking materials, including thermoplastic pavement markings, waterborne traffic paints and preformed thermoplastics.

The company supplies specialty materials for roadway applications throughout the United States and Canada, for a customer base that includes state departments of transportation, civil and highway contractors, cities, universities and airports.

Ozark Logistics, LLC is a logistics provider operating a dedicated fleet of vehicles located in five states across the United States to serve customers.

Ozark Materials is headquartered in Greenville, Ala., and operates through four manufacturing locations and a distribution center.

Ingevity said it anticipates that Ozark Materials will generate revenues of approximately $150 million and EBITDA margins of approximately 20 percent during calendar 2023 and expects the acquisition to be immediately accretive to Ingevity’s earnings per share.

Ingevity said it will include the business in the company’s Performance Chemicals segment.

Ingevity operates from 25 locations around the world and employs approximately 1,850 people.

Gov. Henry McMaster and the S.C. Department of Commerce announced Aug. 3, 2022, that Greif, a global leader in industrial packaging products and services, plans to expand operations in Greenville County.

The company is investing $13 million over the next five years, Commerce officials said.

Greif was founded in Cleveland, Ohio in 1877. Now, more than 140 years later, Greif is strategically located in more than 35 countries to serve its customers in the United States and around the world.

The company produces steel, plastic and fibre drums; intermediate bulk containers; containerboard; corrugated packaging; recycled boxboard; tubes; cores; and a variety of other products.

With a focus on sustainability, Greif diverts more than 4 million tons of materials from the waste stream annually, and its Land Management Group manages more than 175,000 acres of forests.

Located at 873 Alexander Road in Taylors, Greif’s Greenville County facility serves as a paper mill that utilizes recycled paperboard for the production of spiral tubes and cores.\

The company’s expansion will modernize the facility and increase production capacity, Commerce officials said.

The expansion is expected to be complete in November. 

Bayerische Motoren Werke, as the Munich-based company is formally known, broke its habit of not surprising the market Aug. 3, 2022, by downgrading its outlook for full-year free cash flows to “at least €10 billion,” equivalent to $10.2 billion, from a previous estimate of at least €12 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported.

It blamed two factors: weak production due to the continuing shortage of semiconductors and higher spending on electric vehicles, The Journal reported.

Perhaps more worryingly, the company also said order intake was lower than a year ago and that its order book would normalize toward the end of the year, particularly in Europe, according to The Journal.

It said this would appear to confirm concerns about the darkening outlook for consumer demand.

The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), the voice of the country’s nearly 3,000 local health departments, with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has selected nine local health departments to participate as host sites in Cohort I of the Partnering for Vaccine Equity Project.

 They are: 

Bent County Public Health, Colorado

Hall County Board of Health, Georgia

Dent County Health Center, Missouri

Central District Health Department, Nebraska

Two Rivers Public Health Department, Nebraska

Trumbull County Combined Health District, Ohio

South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, South Carolina

Paris-Lamar County Health District, Texas

Monongalia County Health Department, West Virginia. 

Over the past three flu seasons, vaccination coverage has increased among adults; however, racial, and ethnic disparities in flu vaccination coverage remain, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Officials said adults from racial and ethnic minority groups have lower flu vaccination rates and higher rates of severe flu illness and flu-related morbidity and mortality compared to non-Hispanic White adults.

This same trend of low vaccination and high morbidity and mortality is documented for Covid-19, the officials said.  

They said disparities in vaccination coverage, especially among racial and ethnic minority adults, contribute to and further exacerbate existing health inequities. 

The Partnering for Vaccine Equity project said it seeks to support local health departments to improve Covid-19 and influenza vaccination coverage because it is an important approach for improving the overall health and economic opportunity for historically-marginalized groups and advancing health equity in communities.  

The project will run through Dec. 31, 2022.