About 72,000 people lost their job in retailing in the past year because of online shopping and automation, the British Consortium (BRC) says. The number of employees in the sector fell 2.3% in the second quarter compared with the same period last year. Space taken by store rose 1.7%, down from 2.3% in the first quarter. The BRC urged new prime minister Boris Johnson to make retail a priority and “rethink the high-street strategy” (The Times £). The BRC urged to overhaul business rates (The Daily Mail). The Telegraph recalls Waitrose’s announcement last week it was closing seven more stores, jeopardising 700 jobs. It notes Marks & Spencer is nearing the end of a major store-closure programme and Tesco confirmed in January that up to 9,000 jobs could go with the closure of a swathe of its fresh food counters.

Theresa Villiers, a former Northern Ireland secretary, has replaced Michael Gove as environment secretary. Part of her job will include helping the food industry prepare for a potential no-deal Brexit. New prime minister Boris Johnson has appointed Gove as Duchy of Lancaster and put him in charge of Brexit preparations, alongside his former aide, Dominic Cummings (Bloomberg).

B&M Bargains will open 45 new shops this year. Twelve new branches opened in the three months to 29 June. The retailer increased sales by 13.8% for the past quarter. Like-for-like sales climbed 3.9% (The Times £). Sales at its recently-acquired convenience store chain Heron Foods jumped more than 8 per cent, supported by six new stores (The Daily Mail).

Supermarkets are frantically rushing to keep shelves full of ice creams, burgers, beer and other barbecue essentials with the temperature on course to hit record levels today. Tesco has a meteorological team of 12 forecasting the weather to make sure the grocer can optimise the opportunities. They use software to calculate show shopping patterns change as the temperatures and hours of sunlight fluctuate (The Daily Mail)

A study by Wrap identifies more than £1bn of food destined for UK supermarkets is chucked or fed to animals before it leaves farms every year. Sugar beet is the most likely to be thrown away in terms of volume but poultry accounts for the highest value of waste food at £85m in 2017. Wrap has established a network to link farmers and small-scale producers to identify new outlets for surplus food, including charities. It is also working with farmers and retailers to improve guidance on setting quality standards (The Guardian).

Could the biblical practice of gleaning cut food waste, asks the BBC, which reports that Feedback Global is one of a handful of campaign groups organising gleans across Britain. Gleaning traditionally guides farmers to leave overlooked produce for the needy.

Stopping Tobacco Organisations and Products, funded with $20m (£16m) from US billionaire Michael Bloomberg, has launched an online database naming companies that help promote the tobacco industry. The Financial Times (£) says it is the first globally co-ordinated anti-tobacco industry campaign group that identifies companies, think tanks and others that it believes promote the industry without necessarily acknowledging their links to the sector.

Cargill has pledged to slash methane emissions from its beef business by almost a third in the next decade (Financial Times £). The Minnesota-based agribusiness has committed itself to a 30% reduction in the climate-changing effect of “belching cows and other practices”, the newspaper says.

Russia’s top social network VK is to offer shopping on Chinese ecommerce group Alibaba so its users will be able to shop for Chinese goods via app with integrated payment expected this year (Financial Times £). Lex, in the Financial Times (£) notes that Alibaba has also opened its business-to-business platform to US sellers but it could prove the start of another costly losing battle for Alibaba in the Department of Justice gets its way.

Philippines’ Jollibee is to buy US speciality coffee and tea shop chain Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf for $350m – its largest overseas acquisition (Financial Times £).

Marston’s shares fell almost 10.7% at one point yesterday after the company reported sales had weakened over the past four months and it was shelving investment to pay off debts (The Times £). Peel Hunt analysts said Marston’s self-described “modest” sales growth was “slightly worse than we expected” (The Daily Mail).

Could Associated British Foods’ toothache from sugar finally be on the wane, asks The Times (£). The newspaper says a strong recovery in the sugar market this year combined with years of cost cutting has made it more upbeat about the outlook for its sugar division.

Britvic posted a 1.5% drop in revenue to £360.1m, excluding the UK’s sugar tax and a similar levy in Ireland in what it hailed a “solid” third quarter (The Times £).

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