We continue to face fiercer competition in all our markets. Apple juice has become a commodity item, with ever-tightening margins. Chile and China continue to be formidable competitors in the apple industry, in both the fresh and processing arenas. Globally, the one true thing we may expect is for the competitive environment to remain.

Our reorganization-bringing our Consumer Packaged Goods and Ingredients Divisions back under one umbrella-has gone smoothly. Although we maintain separate sales forces for each, we're no longer duplicating administrative and support functions. Operating as separate divisions made sense for a while, allowing distinct focus on each business line, but with changes in markets and plant structures, the time had come for that to end. We're already seeing the fruits of this change.

Our Fresh Slice line is still a young business, but we continue to strengthen existing customer relationships, as well as seek out and enter new markets. With the increased consumer desire for quick, healthful, convenient food, we anticipate this to be an in-demand product for the foreseeable future.

We've fully integrated Northwest Naturals into our business. Northwest Naturals supplies flavors and bases for beverages and foods of major food product companies. Of course, we were confident this addition would be a good fit for Tree Top; we've been very pleasantly surprised at the smooth transition. This, too, presents a significant growth opportunity as we continue to increase our presence in the concentrates business.

This last year saw a tremendous increase in energy costs. The cost of natural gas, which we use in operations, but also affects PET packaging costs, added nearly $4M to the cost of doing business. Energy forecasters don't anticipate this changing in the near future, so we're taking steps to conserve as much as possible, as well as improving our energy purchasing processes. We are hopeful this strategy will allow us to avoid the major up- and down-swings of the energy market.

About a year ago, we formed a task force charged with conducting a thorough assessment of all our operations, with the goal of identifying opportunities for improving our overall operations. Early in the calendar year, the task force developed a long-term plan that will achieve that goal, but will require us to make some difficult decisions and significant changes in our plants.