Unilever chief executive Alan Jope, who succeeded Paul Polman in January, has signalled in his first interview since taking the job the group will shift further from food to the higher-margin beauty and personal care market (The Financial Times £). He was clear the elusive recovery in sales growth would not come from chasing the start-ups producing plant-based meats, although the company bought Vegetarian Butcher last year which he called an “experimental foray”. Jope told the newspaper: “We’re playing very aggressively on high-quality, fast-growing beauty and personal care assets, and more selectively on food assets, especially when crazy valuations are involved.”
Tesco chief executive Dave Lewis told The Times (£) CEO Summit the company’s turnaround could have been achieved faster but would have been “very damaging to do it that way”. He said leaders had to balance achieving short-term value for investors against ensuring a sustainable long-term future. Profit and cash should never be the fundamental motivation for leadership, he said. Predecessor Philip Clarke lost his way because of his fixation on a 5.2% profit margin, Lewis said. “We looked for different ways to engineer profit. Customers saw us as big and self-interested and we lost their trust.” Ben van Beurden, the chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, said at the same summit that consumers who ate strawberries in winter months and bought throwaway fashion were contributing to global warming. (The Times £)
JPMorgan warned that Beyond Meat’s sizzling rally had left the fake meat company vulnerable to disappointing investors – causing the shares to do just that when they responded with a 25% fall on Tuesday (Financial Times £). Ken Goldman, an analyst at the broker, cut his outlook on the stock from “buy” to “neutral” in what he said was purely a valuation call. The stock closed at $126.04 but remain more than five times their initial offer price of $25 each. Reuters says the shares slumped 20% “after meteoric rise questioned”.
Vancouver grocer East West Market’s attempt to “plastic shame” backfired when it’s plastic bags sporting “embarrassing” logos such as “Into the Weird Adult Video Emporium”, designed for those failing to bring their own carriers, became must-haves for hipsters (The Guardian).
Greenpeace has lambasted some of the world’s largest brands for global deforestation (Sky News). It claimed at least 50m ha (124m acres) of forests across the world will have been lost in the decade to 2020 as a result of growing production and consumption of agricultural goods. It pointed the finger at demand for soy, meat and dairy for driving the destruction.
Compass Group announced the acquisition of Fazer Food Services for €475m, subject to regulatory approval, to expand its Northern European reach into Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Estonia, (The Financial Times £). The group said Fazer’s focus on quality and innovation would “enable Compass to create compelling and innovative solutions for its clients and consumers” (The Times £).
China National Tobacco shares climbed as much as 10% in morning trading in Hong Kong after the international unit of China’s state-run tobacco monopoly raised about HK$813m in its initial public offering (The Financial Times £). The shares opened up about 1.8% on Wednesday.
Japan is participating in the drive against plastic with wooden beer bottles and paper straws, creating opportunities for the nation’s declining paper industry, says the (The Financial Times £). The country is the world’s second-biggest producer per capita of plastic waste after the US. Nipon Paper is looking to commercialise a paper alternative to the pouches that hold refills of household detergents, shampoos and soaps with Sopos containers that are mostly cardboard and designed as cartridges that can fit into and be removed from plastic dispensers, with no scissors required.
Vietnam has accused China of mislabelling products “made in Vietnam” to avoid US tariffs. Chinese businesses import goods including fisheries, farm products and honey which customs officials said are relabelled and then shipped on to another country (The Independent). Vietnam foreign minister Pham Binh Minh warned of serious consequences if such action cannot be controlled (Sky News).
Wilmar International plans to build new plants in China for crushing soybean. The company, one of the world’s largest food producers, believes animal meal demand will eventually recover even though a deadly pig-killing virus is cutting demand for animal feed (Bloomberg).
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