Last week was unproductive, but it is over and I am starting a new week. Koor is selling Makhteshim to the Chinese. I saw it coming since I was in Ecuador: Makhteshim was being out-competed by cheaper Chinese products. So the time has come to move production to China and focus on marketing and research. Makhteshim has been tortured to death by the Ministry of Environment and the "Green" activists, that now will have to search for another enemy. Currently, about 20% of Makhteshim's production cost is environmentally dictated. Apparently the Chinese are ready to pay a good premium on TASE price. On the good news, I already sold most of my holdings.
I am definitely for the Chinese. They are making all the world wealthier. For example, I have an IBM laptop that I bought six or seven years ago for about 3,000 dollars. A better one if now offered by Lenovo for 500 dollars. Excellent Chinese shirts are sold for 5 dollars. I bought Chinese frozen fish for a quarter of the Argentine fish (but I didnt like it).
What is my agenda for this coming week? The Israeli gas and oil sector has fever and I am not in it. I am sleeping too well, I should take more risks.
Update: The agreement with the Chinese says that they will keep the factories in Israel till 2017. In other words, they are emptying the company and moving the operation to China. Sad. I did once some work related to Makhteshim and it was a good company. It had grown to be the largest of the world in generic pesticides. We are losing it.
9 comments:
You are not happy unless you are anxious.
Anon.
I am not happy. True.
It is harder and harder to be happy nowadays.
Anon.
I don't know what's going to happen. This weekend I went thru Reading, Pennsylvania, which was once a tidy and prosperous small manufacturing city in Pennsylvania, around 100km NW of Philadelphia. The city was built around textile mills which used to employ thousands. The mills closed maybe 40 years ago and the buildings were re-used as "factory outlets" - cheap retail space, but instead of hundreds of workers elbow to elbow at sewing machines, there were a handful of clerks manning the cash register. Still, customers used to come from hundreds of miles around to get bargains on clothing, etc. so it was better than nothing.
Then "factory outlet malls" were built all across the country (these no longer have anything to do with factories - they are just another "retail concept") and consumer spending turned sour. When you lose your job, you just don't feel like shopping for more shmattes. On this visit, the mills turned factory outlets of Reading were abandoned completely. The windows were missing and the birds flew in and out. It will take dynamite to bring the buildings down - they were built to carry heavy machinery on their floors and the concrete columns are as big around as elephants. The remaining population seems to be mostly Mexican. They have opened small grocery stores, record shops but none of them has the skills or intelligence to create a textile mill or other industry that will again employ thousands. I fear that Reading is a microcosm of future America - Mexicans amid ruins.
K
Now the good news: You can get excellent carne con chile in Reading.
Verdad. In nearby Norristown (a similar but even smaller city) you can now eat tacos autenticos y muy baratos. I always order cabeza y lengua and menudo and other innards which disgust my semi-vegetarian daughter. I say semi because she has decided that chicken is an honorary vegetable .
K
Maybe the engineers from Agam will go on to design new pesticides, instead of manufacturing ones whose patents have expired.
It is not so easy.
Yes! if the ex-Agam engineers create a new pesticide the Chinese might simply copy it without paying for it.
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