All articles by Charlie Wright – Page 20
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NewsCamelot denied in commercial services bid
Camelot will not be allowed to offer bill payments and mobile top-ups via its National Lottery terminals. The National Lottery commission today handed victory to PayPoint in its long-running battle to prevent Camelot offering commercial services via the terminals.
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Comment and Opinion
Terry, we hardly knew ye
Elvis has left the building. Okay, so Sir Terry Leahy is probably few people’s idea of a rock star. But for UK grocery, his long-awaited exit represents as seismic a departure as when rock and roll died on a Las Vegas toilet in 1977.
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NewsOcado expands its horizons with West Country deliveries
Ocado is to begin delivering in the West Country and southern Wales from tomorrow. The online retailer will service the new markets using from its Bristol distribution hub, plans for which were first announced in October. Ocado said the launch would enable it reach one million extra households.
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Comment and Opinion
Price wars... what are they good for?
Too much messing about with computers, it said. No one is going to want to go shopping, come home and start faffing about with the internet to see if what they have already bought might have been cheaper elsewhere, it cried.
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NewsGlengoyne maker toasts exports boom
Surging exports helped independent whisky maker Ian Macleod Distillers to bumper gains in sales and profits in the past year. The maker of Glengoyne Highland Single Malt said sales were up 22% to £31.9m in 2010, while pre-tax profits soared by 41% to £3.1m.
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NewsDepartment of Health warns of red meat cancer risk
The Department of Health has waded into the row over the health risks posed by eating meat, advising consumers for the first time that cutting consumption of red and processed meat could reduce the risk of bowel cancer.
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NewsBAT strikes lucky as profits grow again
Profits grew by 5% at British American Tobacco in the past year to £4.32bn. Sales were up by 3% on an organic basis and by 5% overall to a new high of £14.88bn.
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NewsMorrisons plans to double women on top management team
Morrisons plans to double the number of women in senior management roles over the next three years. Women currently represent just 13% of the supermarket’s senior management group – a proportion Morrisons aims to grow to 30% by 2014.
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Comment and Opinion
Agenda benders
Last week it was meat. In the battle for hearts and minds, conflicting reports appeared in the space of a couple of days: first busting the “myths” about red meat increasing the risk of cancer, then suggesting those myths were all too real.
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NewsCornish pasties given PGI status
The Cornish pasty has been handed Protected Geographical Indication status following a battle lasting almost a decade.
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NewsShoppers put health before ethics, poll claims
Consumers prioritise their health over the ethics of their shopping habits, a new study claims. Thirty percent more people looked for health claims than ethical ones in a poll of 1,000 UK shoppers by MMR Research Worldwide.
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NewsPrinces besieged by Greenpeace protesters
Protestors dressed as sharks laid siege to the Liverpool headquarters of Princes yesterday in a protest against tuna fishing.
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Comment and Opinion
Satisfaction not guaranteed
Asda today published its full-year results – or rather, the collection of cherry-picked factoids that passes for a breakdown of its financial performance. Sales were up 1.6% on a like-for-like basis in the fourth quarter, representing something of a turnaround from the slow-motion car-crash of last year.
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Comment and Opinion
GSCOP, bad cop
Fittingly, the Adjudicator has had an air of mystery about it ever since the grocery ombudsman was given its rather Kafka-esque name last AugustClicks:4 (CTR 2.96%).
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Comment and Opinion
Nocton's technical knockout
They say letter-writing is a lost art (although subscribers to thegrocer.co.uk can receive their Daily Bread via snail-mail on the back of a postcard of Crawley if they really want to).
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Comment and Opinion
The Kiddi's alright
So the City rumour mill was right – sort of. Morrisons was looking to get its hands on an online retailer after all – just not Ocado, much to the disappointment of many speculative shareholders in the posh food retailer.
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NewsWaitrose eyes North American exports push
Waitrose is planning to export food to the US and Canada as the supermarket continues to broaden its horizons overseas. The supermarket has identified the North American markets as the next targets for its exports business, which is currently worth £100m.
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Comment and Opinion
Fair's fare
Last week the papers were up in arms over the news that a shopworker in Essex had been arrested after helping herself to a pile of spoiled stock thrown out by Tesco following a power cut.
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NewsFood & Health Debate to air on 20 February
The Grocer’s Food & Health Debate will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 next weekend. Highlights from the debate, where health secretary Andrew Lansley was a keynote speaker, will air on The Food Programme at 12.30pm on Sunday (20 February) and at 16.00pm on Monday (21 February).
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Comment and OpinionAd of the Week: Beware the poison Bakewell of cakes’ Lucrezia Borgia
Over two decades with the Oxo clan, Lynda Bellingham matured from MILF to glamorous granny, via that awkward menopausal stage at which female BBC newsreaders get sacked. A more sinister change is befalling Mrs Kipling.