Chobani CEO Touts Twin Falls Labor Force
TWIN FALLS • Chobani President and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya said Tuesday that a skilled labor force, as well as plentiful milk supply, was a big factor in the company choosing Twin Falls for its $300 million plant. Ulukaya was in Twin Falls to view progress at the plant. He also appeared Tuesday at the College of Southern Idaho, where Business Plus Inc. officials gave $150,000 to the Chobani senior management team and the city of Twin Falls. The money will help pay for utility upgrades to wastewater pre-treatment and for natural gas connections.Ulukaya did not give a completion date for the new 900-square-foot plant, saying only it will be done before the end of 2012. It will be the second outlet for the Greek yogurt manufacturer, which now produces its product in New Berlin, N.Y.
The Twin Falls plant will have a beneficial economic ripple effect for the local area, Ulukaya predicted.
“A lot of businesses will follow Chobani’s footsteps, a lot of suppliers,” he said.
He also credited CSI for developing a key training program for newly hired Chobani management employees, saying higher education is critical to Chobani’s success.
“There’s a lot of talent in colleges,” Ulukaya said. “We need that knowledge. We have some amazing people on our team, but we need that training to help us.”
Training is continuing on the CSI campus through Friday. Chobani is expected to provide up to 500 jobs here, and company officials have said most will pay at least $14 an hour.
Mitch Watkins, Business Plus co-president, said the economic development organization is happy to help finance infrastructure for Chobani.
It’s probably fair to say that few American have heard of Peak Games, the Istanbul-based startup that recently became the world’s No. 3 social-gaming company in terms of daily active users (DAU). That’s because Peak develops and publishes online games that are culturally targeted at Turkish, Middle Eastern, and North African markets. All but one of the games are available only in Turkish and Arabic.
HOUSTON, PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Houston Mayor Annise Parker announces new non-stop flights to Istanbul beginning April 1, 2013, operated by Turkish Airlines between George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) and Istanbul's Ataturk International Airport (IST). "Houston's strong business connections with Turkey created the opportunity to attract this foreign flag airline to our city," said Mayor Parker. "Houston has become the gateway to the world. Our global business structure helps our economy thrive and our job market remains the envy of the nation. These four new weekly flights will surely lead to increased economic opportunity for both Istanbul and Houston."
Felicis Ventures, the “super angel” fund founded by early-Google employee Aydin Senkut, has closed a $70 million round of funding that will be used to invest in technology startups including those in the mobile, health and education industries. In the same week that prominent investor Paul Graham warned startups with little or no sales that it may be more difficult to raise money following Facebook’s IPO, Senkut said he plans to use the funding to back companies with meaningful sources of revenue and the potential for large initial public offerings or acquisitions.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - General Electric Co. will invest $900 million in Turkey's infrastructure development and innovation projects over the next three years, John Rice, Vice Chairman and President of GE global growth and operations said on Monday in Istanbul.
The 31th edition of the Turkish-American Council's annual conferences is set to begin on Monday in Washington which would discuss relations between Turkey and the United States. The three-day conference will bring together senior government, business and finance figures including Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, US Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman as well as 2008 Republican presidential hopeful John McCain. 
New goals to make the Turkish diaspora more active in political and economic scenes in their countries of residence have been set by the World Turkish Business Council (DTİK), founded in 2009 under the Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEİK), an affiliate of the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges (TOBB).
TCA is hosting the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) and Attorneys General from four states this week on a program that takes the delegation to Istanbul, Patara and Ankara. The tour is led by Doug Gansler of Maryland and includes David M. Louie of Hawaii, Lawrence G. Wasden of Idaho and Chris Koster of Missouri. The delegation met with Turkish President Abdullah Gul in Istanbul and will also be visiting the President of the Turkish
Intel Capital is the first Silicon Valley investor to launch an office in Turkey's largest city, Istanbul, reports Financial News. Intel Capital is an American multinational company that makes investments in innovative technology start-ups as well as in firms offering hardware, software and services. The company has been investing in Turkey since 2005 and sees that the country has large potential as it has many technology innovators and entrepreneurs. Intel Capital most recent investments in Turkey are to Turkish companies Nokta and Grupanya.
ScienceDaily (June 5, 2012) — Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) Space Systems' Dream Chaser design passed one of its most complex tests to date with a successful captive-carry test conducted near the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Jefferson County, Colo., on May 29. Just like the space shuttle before it, SNC's Dream Chaser will go through extensive testing to prove its wings will work. The company built a full-scale flight vehicle of the Dream Chaser spacecraft to carry out the evaluations.
If you had to pick a company as a metaphor for the key themes of this year’s World Economic Forum, you’d be pressed to find a better example than Turkey’s Yildiz Holding. The Istanbul conference — themed “bridging transformations,” and which opened Tuesday — is the first WEF meeting to focus specifically on the Middle East, Africa and Eurasia regions. It’s a region that Yildiz, an Istanbul-based food and beverages conglomerate that owns sweets maker Ulker and the luxury chocolate brand, Godiva, knows all to well. Propelled by a strong domestic market and rapid expansion across markets from West Africa to South Asia, the company, which posted an average of 11% revenue growth over the past two years and forecasts an expansion of 14% this year, is one of fast-growing Turkey’s corporate success stories.
"NY Med," an eight-episode documentary series follow-up to "Boston Med" and "Hopkins," is heading to ABC this July. The new documentary series will explore the lives of doctors and patients inside of Columbia and Weill Cornell hospitals, two of New York's most prestigious hospitals. 
By JASON GOODWIN - NYT - Joseph Kanon is a specialist in fin de guerre thrillers, whose previous novels set in 1945-46 include “Alibi,” “Los Alamos,” “The Good German” and “Stardust.” The period is well chosen: dark secrets are finally coming to the surface, and people are being called to account for what the war has made them. For readers, it’s immediately recognizable territory: the aftermath of the conflict, shabby, filmic. Now, in “Istanbul Passage,” Kanon compounds the fraught postwar mood with a location to match.
A Turkish mill booked a 30,000 mt mixed cargo from a North American supplier at a composite price of $403/mt CFR Izmir late Thursday, revealing the level of the global import benchmark market. The cargo includes 12,000 mt of plate and structural, 12,000 mt of shredded scrap and 6,000 mt of HMS I. Platts daily assessment has now lost $50/mt in a month, starting June at $400/mt CFR Turkish ports for premium-graded heavy melting scrap I/II (80/20 blend): a decrease of $10/mt in a day. This is the lowest point the price series has been since records began in December 2010. The reduction month-on-month matches almost to the dollar the decrease heard in the US domestic market for June.
