All articles by Adam Leyland – Page 53
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News
Editor's Comment: Tesco has become part of The Establishment
This week Tesco overtook Carrefour to become the world's second-most profitable retailer. And with the Chancellor announcing a basket case Budget a day later, it might seem odd to question one of the enduring success stories of the past New Labour...
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NewsOwn Label/PLMA Preview: Ideas that cross frontiers
The recent success of the discounters is a reminder to the UK's grocery establishment that British consumers have a strong appetite for foreign goods and ideas. By Adam Leyland
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News
Editor's Comment: As Ocado adds scale, it can increase profits exponentially
The UK's fastest-growing grocery retailer is probably not who you might think, says Adam Leyland
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News
Editor's Comment: Even today, Innocent founders prefer flipflops to Ferraris
Arch comments were in no short supply this week as Innocent Drinks confirmed the sale of a minority stake to Coca-Cola for £30m. One resourceful journalist on the Daily Telegraph, in a search for haunting former protestations about its die-hard...
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NewsActivia and Actimel keep up the pace in downturn
Sales of Activia and Actimel have continued where they left off in 2008 in the first quarter of 2009, with 50% of Activia's double-digit growth coming from its new Intensely Creamy posh desserts range. In a static market, volume sales in...
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NewsCoca-Cola takes £30m stake in Innocent
Coca-Cola has taken a minority stakeholding in Innocent Drinks, the smoothie and veg pots brand, for £30m, The Grocer can reveal.
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News
Editor's Comment: Booker's Indian wholesale move shows Charles Wilson's entrepreneurial spirit
Charles Wilson is a canny one. The CEO of Booker has done a great job since returning to his old stomping ground, and the latest quarter's 6.4% like-for-like growth confirms the progress. Indeed, coming in the same week M&S announced a 4.2%...
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News
Promote or BANG!
You don't have to like it, and it's getting more scary by the minute, but trade promotion is an essential feature of modern retailing. Adam Leyland and James Ball report
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NewsEditor's Comment: So now we can advertise condoms to kids, but not cheese, honey or bran-rich cereals
Over the past half decade, Dame Deirdre Hutton has been a key figure at two identically titled regulatory bodies: the FSA and the FSA. The Food Standards Agency, which she has chaired since 2005, Dame Deirdre has regulated with a fearsome...
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News
The Price promise
A new entry-level range will make Waitrose an essential shop, says managing director Mark Price. By Adam Leyland
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News
Editor's Comment: Coca-Cola working with Innocent? That would take a lot of getting used to
It's been a week of strong contrasts. Morrisons (up) versus Waitrose (down). Cola (up) versus smoothies and bottled water (down). And, in another delightful example of how perplexing it must be to be a shopper, contrasting articles, on the same...
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News
Smiles at Innocent but will Coca-Cola be its new mate?
Bruised by recession and intense competition, Innocent is in talks with investors to fuel overseas expansion. How's it hanging? By Adam Leyland and James Ball
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News
Britain's top brands defy crunch to leave own-label lagging
Own-label lines may be flying off the shelves as cash-strapped consumers trade down to value. But Britain's 100 Biggest Grocery Brands are flying even faster, a new report published by The Grocer reveals. The ranking, published in...
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News
Editor's Comment: Tesco win leaves competition test in tatters
Who's the biggest loser in this week's historic ruling by the Competition Appeals Tribunal (see p5)? Tesco's rivals? UK shoppers? Or chief commissioner Peter 'Gordon' Freeman and his sidekicks at the Competition Commission? At least the...
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Comment & Opinion
Editor's Comment: Oscar night had nothing on the agony of Watchdog's supermarket poll
Oscar night is excruciating. As the winners are announced, cameras spy on those who missed out. Employing all the skills of the thespian trade, actors still struggle to hide the disappointment on their faces.
That had nothing, however, on… -
Comment & Opinion
Editor's Comment: FSA satfats consultation sounds ominous
The ire of the industry over regulation is being kept in check, at the moment, by the more pressing concerns surrounding the economy - and survival - but this week came two reminders of the parallel universe in which Government, and its many...
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Comment & Opinion
Editor's Comment: Significant inflationary pressures remain in the system
Inflation. It's the last thing anyone needs right now. So multiple grocery retailers have been doing their best to downplay it, while bombarding the market with promotions. Yet, while the falling price of oil and plentiful harvests have...
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Comment & Opinion
Editor's Comment: Grocery companies are no longer immune to the downturn
New bosses always paint it black. Whether tacitly, or outspokenly, “it’s going to take time to sort out the mess I inherited”, has been inferred in the utterances of countless new chief executives, supply chain directors or supermarket managers,...
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Comment & Opinion
Editor's Comment: Spayne Lindsay's intriguing new private equity fund
As a result of the recession, there’s a heightened sense of anticipation in every announcement at the moment, good or bad, but C4’s devotion of seemingly its entire late-January schedule to food and drink-based issues is such, to paraphrase the late…
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News
Editor's Comment: Why not feed pigs on tinned pasta?
Normally I wouldn’t have given a second thought to the pâté in my fridge this morning. It was well past its sell-by date – a hangover from the excesses of Christmas. Until, that is, I read the advice of the Food Standards Agency this week....