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HAWAII

Oregon company can harvest timber

HILO » The state gave an Oregon company the go-ahead to harvest timber from a eucalyptus forest on state land near Hilo after the logger secured new funding.

Approval from the Board of Land and Natural Resources pushes the Waiakea Timber Management Area logging project forward after a six-year delay.

It could create jobs for 100 workers at a new peeling mill on the Hamakua Coast.

The venture ran into problems when the processor, Tradewinds LLC, developed funding problems weeks after it received a license in 1999.

Tradewinds recently enlisted a Houston company called Rockland Capital Energy Investments LLC to provide $1 million in startup funding to get the project going.

The Waiakea Timber Management Area consists of nearly 12,000 acres of eucalyptus and several other varieties of nonnative trees, most of them planted in the 1960s in forests cleared along Stainback Highway.

Tradewinds plans to build a mill to peel logs from the area into veneer sheets that would be dried and shipped to a plywood mill on the mainland.

ML Macadamia declares payout

ML Macadamia Orchards LP declared a quarterly distribution yesterday of 5 cents a Class A unit that will be paid Nov. 15 to unit holders of record as of this Friday.

The Big Island grower of macadamia nuts said the distribution will mark the 78th consecutive quarterly payout since the partnership's inception in 1986. The yield on the distribution is 3.4 percent based on the company's most recent stock price.

NATION & WORLD

Horizon raises $125 million in IPO

Horizon Lines Inc., an ocean shipping company controlled by buyout firm Castle Harlan Inc., raised $125 million in an initial public offering.

The company sold 12.5 million shares at $10 each, Charlotte, N.C.-based Horizon said yesterday. Goldman, Sachs & Co. and UBS Investment Bank managed the sale and have 30-day options to buy an additional 1.88 million shares to meet demand.

Horizon had said in March it plans to raise as much as $287.5 million as cargo-line profits and stocks have risen. Last week, the company revised its per-share expectation to between $10 and $12. The company competes with Alexander & Baldwin Inc.'s Matson Navigation unit between the U.S. West Coast and Hawaii.

New York-based Castle Harlan, which also owns companies such as Morton's Restaurant Group Inc. and Ames True Temper Inc., bought Horizon from Carlyle Group in July of last year for about $650 million. Carlyle had acquired Horizon 15 months earlier from CSX Corp., the third-largest U.S. railroad, for $300 million.

Japanese truckmaker recalls 68% of vehicles

TOKYO » Defective vehicles recalled by Mitsubishi Fuso Truck & Bus Corp., a Japanese truckmaker embroiled in a massive cover-up scandal, have topped 2.64 million since March last year -- affecting 68 percent of Mitsubishi trucks and buses on the road in Japan.

Mitsubishi Fuso, 85 percent owned by Germany's DaimlerChrysler AG, announced five new recalls yesterday covering some 120,000 middle and lightweight trucks, the latest in a series of 98 recall reports filed since last year.

The overall figures include some vehicles recalled up to eight times for defects such as faulty tail pipes, or wiring that can short a fuse or cause the vehicle to stop, a company spokesman said today on condition of anonymity, citing regulations.

Intel, Microsoft back HD DVD standard

SAN JOSE, Calif. » Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp., the leading suppliers of chips and software for most of the world's personal computers, are throwing their support behind the next-generation DVD standard known as HD DVD.

After taking a neutral stance for months in the battle between the competing HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats, the companies said today they have joined the HD DVD Promotion Group that includes Toshiba Corp., Universal Studios and others.

The move means upcoming PCs running Microsoft's upcoming Windows Vista operating system or Intel's Viiv entertainment technology will come with support for HD DVD drives.