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4 CapitalPress.com December 11, 2015 Apple marketers look for more shelf space By DAN WHEAT Capital Press YAKIMA, Wash. — More product diversity within al- most every supermarket cat- egory is making the compe- tition for shelf space more keen, a leading market analyst told leaders of the Washington apple industry on Dec. 7. That means new apple varieties will continue to eat into the shelf space of older varieties unless retailers are able to increase their income from the space devoted to ap- ples and then increase it, Steve Lutz, vice president of Colum- bia Marketing International, Wenatchee, said at the Wash- ington State Tree Fruit Associ- ation annual meeting. That happens, Lutz said, when retailers display well-packaged, newer vari- eties more prominently than older varieties offered at lower prices. Lutz said he surveyed the top 15 and the bottom 15 re- tailers in apple sales last year when Washington’s largest ap- ple crop in history was being marketed. He found those that promoted more popular, high- er-priced varieties sold more apples. Those cutting prices lost money and volume, he said. Lutz founded The Perish- ables Group, now Nielsen Perishables Group, a category Dan Wheat/Capital Press Jeff Cleveringa, head of research and development of Oneonta Starr Ranch Growers in Wenatchee, holds a Lady in Red apple as he talks with Ken Adams, president of Willow Drive Nursery in Ephrata, at the Washington State Tree Fruit Association annual meeting in Yakima on Dec. 7. Cosmic Crisp, Chelan Spur and Royal Red Honeycrisp are also on display. management firm in Chicago, following his tenure as presi- dent of the Washington Apple Commission. He sold The Per- ishables Group to Nielsen and joined CMI a few years ago. Promoting cheap apples is a “self-defeating strategy and waste of space,” Lutz said. An assortment of 37 unique apples was sold last October through April and some of those are also available as or- ganic, he said. During a panel discussion of top marketers that followed Lutz, Mike Taylor, vice presi- dent of sales and marketing at Stemilt Growers, Wenatchee, said he thinks retail space for apples will grow, but slowly. Apples will continue to benefit from the trend to- ward healthy eating but it’ll take time, said Randy Ab- hold, vice president of sales and marketing at Rainier Fruit Co. in Selah. Mac Riggan, director of marketing at Chelan Fresh Marketing, said young people are looking at what’s in their food and will choose Honey- crisp apples at $2.99 per pound over Red Delicious at 99 cents. “Organics are taking off. Last year (amid a huge crop and poor prices) organics had a halo effect. People are paying extra for new brands like Jazz or Envy, and for organics,” Riggan said. Robert Kershaw, president of Domex Superfresh Grow- ers in Yakima, said getting the right price for larger ap- ple crops is like breaking the four-minute mile. Once it’s broken others have more con- fidence to do it, he said. Abhold said consumers are hungry for new, exciting vari- eties that are consistent and eat well. The marketers said com- panies market individual vari- eties they manage better sep- arately than collectively, but that they’ll work collectively on the new Cosmic Crisp that will be planted in 2017 and thereafter. Riggan said when he sees expensive cars in other coun- tries, he’s not as worried about how many apples they can’t buy as how many they can. The opportunity in exports, he said, is like “another popula- tion the size of our country.” Mexico is buying as many Gala as they did Red Deli- cious and paying more for them, Abhold said. “That’s a huge evolution.” Taylor also said H-2A-visa guestworkers are the answer for labor shortages until great- er mechanization is perfected. Feds cite longshoremen for unfair labor practices Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press File Cargo containers are shown being loaded on ships at the Port of Portland in this file photo. A federal agency has twice faulted the longshoremen’s union for unfair labor practices at the port. union should “accept the va- lidity” of the ruling and agree to restore productivity at the container terminal. While the terminal oper- ator has prevailed in these NLRB disputes, using these legal victories to actually bring ocean carriers back to Portland is a more complicat- ed matter, experts say. That’s because the NLRB has ruled that ILWU cannot engage in work slowdowns, but there’s currently almost no work with which to inter- fere at the container terminal. “This is a very unusual scenario when it raises the point of enforcing the law,” said Michael LeRoy, a law professor specializing in labor relations at the University of Illinois. For ICTSI, the NLRB rul- ings are more likely to serve as bargaining chips in its overall negotiations with the long- shoremen’s union, LeRoy said. The union, the port and the container terminal are also en- gaged in other litigation in fed- eral court. It’s possible that ICTSI will use legal victories as part of a public “tit for tat” with the longshoremen’s union but later “wipe the slate clean” so the terminal can again become operational, LeRoy said. Terminal operators have not traditionally enforced such NLRB rulings to win monetary awards due to fear of creating “lifelong ill will” with the longshoremen’s union, said Jim Tessier, a la- bor relations consultant and former employee of the Pa- cific Maritime Association, which represents terminals. “They use it as a negotiat- ing tool,” he said. ICTSI would be wiser to drop the case against the union as a show of good faith rather than press for penal- ties, Tessier said. “That would mean the kiss of death for that company, in my humble opin- ion.” Ocean carriers won’t re- turn to the port unless they’re convinced the union and ter- minal operator have recon- ciled, he said. House passes port performance program By DAN WHEAT Capital Press The U.S. House has passed a bill reauthorizing transpor- tation and infrastructure pro- grams that includes one of several bills aimed at address- ing work slowdowns at U.S. ports. A work slowdown crippled West Coast container ports a year ago, costing agriculture and other industries billions of dollars. Reps. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., and Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., led the effort to in- clude the Port Performance Program in HR 22, the Fixing America’s Surface Transpor- LEGAL tation Act. The FAST Act passed the House, 359 to 65, on Dec. 3. It was agreed to in a conference report between the House and Senate, so is expected to eas- ily pass in the Senate, a New- house aide said. The program requires the Bureau of Transportation Sta- tistics to collect and report port statistics and establish a working group to make rec- ommendations to the agency on specific port performance metrics. The program will provide objective baseline economic data for port operations that will be critical for examining the economic effects of port slowdowns, Newhouse said. “Unfortunately, very lit- tle data exists on the perfor- mance of our ports when it is a requirement in nearly every other sector of our transporta- tion system and is important not only in identifying and dealing with congestion but shaping transportation poli- cy,” Schrader said. Under the bill, the bureau would submit a report on port capacity and volumes no later than Jan. 15 of each year. It would cover the top 25 ports in the nation by tonnage, con- tainers and dry bulk. The working group would submit recommendations to the bureau within one year of enactment. On Nov. 5, Newhouse and Schrader introduced HR 3932, the Ensuring Continued Op- erations and No Other Major Incidents, Closures or Slow- downs, which is known as the ECONOMICS Act. It would establish specific economic triggers that when met would require a board of inquiry to recommend to the president if judicial injunctions should be sought to end strikes or slow- downs. On Aug. 5, Newhouse, Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., and two other Republicans introduced HR 3398, the Protecting Orderly and Re- sponsible Transit of Ship- ment, called the PORTS Act, allowing governors of seaport states and territories to initiate board of inquiries under the Taft-Hartley Act in the event of work slowdowns or strikes. PURSUANT TO ORS CHAPTER 87 Notice is hereby given that the following vehicle will be sold, for cash to the highest bidder, on 12/14/2015. The sale will be held at 10:00 am by AJ’S AUTO REPAIR 1858 13TH ST SE, SALEM, OR 2002 BMW 325Ci VIN = WBABN33462PG58524 Amount due on lien $1,855.00 Reputed owner(s) Sherodi Dallman Northwest Comm CU Legal-49-2-2/#4 LEGAL ADELL LANE MINI STORAGE AUCTION 2773-B ADELL LANE NE SALEM, OREGON 97301 (971) 240-2755 Sat., Dec. 19th 10AM • Cecilio Camuzano Unit #C-14 • Virginia Sherman Unit #C-15C • Juabal Case Unit #C-26 • Anthony Balentine Unit #C-11 50-2/#6 Adell Lane Mini Storage reserves the right to refuse any and all bids. 50-4/#4X A federal agency has twice faulted the longshoremen’s union for unfair labor practic- es at the Port of Portland, but such rulings won’t directly re- store container service at the facility, experts say. Ocean carriers responsible for the majority of container traffic at the port, Hanjin and Hapag-Lloyd, stopped ser- vicing the facility earlier this year due to low productivity. The disruption has affected farmers who relied on Port- land’s container terminal to export crops to Asia and now face higher shipping costs. The National Labor Re- lations Board has found that since September 2012, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union operated cranes and trucks in a “slow and nonproductive manner,” among other actions, to force ocean carriers and the termi- nal operator to “cease doing business with the port.” In a previous ruling, the NLRB also found that the union also engaged in earlier work slowdowns and stop- pages during a dispute with the terminal operator, ICTSI Oregon. These findings allow the agency to seek contempt sanctions against the union in federal court. Capital Press was unable to reach an ILWU spokersper- son for comment. Elvis Gan- da, CEO of ICTSI Oregon, re- leased a statement saying the 50-4/#4 Capital Press ROP-32-52-2/#17 By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI