Kickstart: All aboard for a proxy battle

Railroad company Norfolk Southern Corp. is at the heart of a proxy battle that is seeing an activist investor group building up steam to push out existing management, with both sides citing safety and shareholder returns in the wake of the 2023 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that saw a release and burnoff of the PVC feedstock vinyl chloride monomer.

Cleveland-based Ancora Holdings Group Inc. is calling for shareholders at the May 9 Norfolk Southern annual meeting to support its 13-member board of director candidates. Its effort has drawn backing from a major NS customer, Cleveland-Cliffs Inc., and Glass, Lewis & Co., a shareholder adviser group.

Ancora cites the East Palestine derailment and its aftermath specifically in an April 22 news release and letter to shareholders as being among the reasons for a management change.

"The board further compromised its integrity by saying … that the 'East Palestine incident was not due to bad management or inattention to safety,' despite the directors knowing the National Transportation Safety Board concluded the derailment was '100 percent preventable' and that the company's people on the ground 'lacked the scientific background' to recommend what has been deemed an unnecessary toxic burn," Ancora wrote.

For their part, the current executives of Norfolk Southern also maintain a switch to Ancora's leadership slate would cut back on safety and infrastructure improvements.

"Following the East Palestine incident a year ago, we've made necessary investments to accelerate enhancements to our safety culture and operational transformation," the company says in its votenorfolksouthern.com website. "These investments and operational advancements have meaningfully improved Norfolk Southern's safety performance and service."

Shoppers looking to save some money when buying soft drinks in the United Kingdom will soon also be able to help cut back on virgin plastics.

The supermarket chain Aldi is switching to 100 percent recycled PET for the bottles for its store-brand sodas and bottled water. The switch will save about 10,000 metric tons of virgin plastics per year, our sister paper Sustainable Plastics writes.

Aldi has set a goal to have 50 percent of its plastics packaging come from recycled resins by 2025.

"Moving to recycled content on our soft drinks range forms part of our efforts to accelerate our progress on this journey," said Luke Emery, plastics and packaging director at Aldi U.K.

We're all aware of the rising cost of labor and the difficulty in finding workers.

Auto supplier Lear Corp. notes the labor issue isn't limited to the United States. Our sister publication Crain's Detroit Business notes those global costs as part of the reasoning behind the Southfield, Mich.-based company's decision to buy WIP Industrial Automation, a Spanish company that previously had been one of its suppliers for artificial intelligence and automation.

"Our focus this year is on accelerating automation to address wage inflation and improve efficiencies in our plants," Lear CEO Ray Scott said on a call with investment analysts in February.