Waitrose is extending its support for the Focus on Food campaign by three years, to 2005. The campaign, to raise the profile of food education in schools, is run in conjunction with the RSA. M&S has upgraded its website with improved functionality and increased range. The site carries the full non-food range and Christmas specials. Hoverspeed has launched its biggest ever Christmas shopping campaign with savings of up to 50% on UK high street prices in its Dover, Calais, Ostend, Newhaven and Dieppe terminals and on board its car ferries. Wholesaler Appleby Westward is to give away adult bikes in free prize draws at 320 Spar stores in a pre-Christmas promotion. Group Danone is to make an offer for 100% of the capital of Asia-Pacific's Frucor Beverages group, a market leader in energy drinks. Sainsbury has won the supermarket category in the 2001 EASE awards to companies and organisations which have good practices for disabled people. Ridley Bagels is seeking £58m in damages from Kellogg in the US which it claims pulled out of a joint Garden City Bagels venture in 1999. The Hertfordshire-based company is claiming $70m investment, $9.5m in lost profits and $4m for its bagel plant Sainsbury has awarded 14,000 food skills certificates through its Taste of Success awards scheme in secondary schools which launched last year. Nearly a fifth of UK secondary schools have signed up. Safeway plans to boost English fruit and vegetable sales with a regional branding campaign. The scheme will be trialled in Kent, with apples carrying a Grown in Kent badge. The European Commission has approved the use of trehalose as a food ingredient in the UK. Trehalose is less sweet than sucrose and metabolises into glucose. Tesco.com is now using Utilyx's online energy e-market to buy its energy, in a move from the conventional tender process. The acquisition of Kerry Group's SPP ingredients business by Associated British Foods has been given clearance by the director general of fair trading. Food manufacturing and distribution group S Daniels is reducing costs and selectively increasing prices after warning that annual results were likely to fall significantly below recent expectations. Waitrose supplier Titan Food and Drinks plans to expand its Sports Café branded chilled foods range into other major multiples, and into salad and drinks. US brewer Anheuser-Busch reported net income in the third quarter rose 8.5%, to $559m from $515m last year, on sales that rose 1.5% to $3.45bn. {{NEWS }}

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