NewsHoundThe summer of 06 looked a bit like this. A company that seems to have acquired a new prefix – “Troubled” Northern Foods, decided to sell its’ distribution, flour milling, cakes and specialty bread, and chilled pastry products divisions.
Sainsburys encouraged diversity in supply by launching it’s website “supplysomethingnew.co.uk” aimed at regional suppliers. The Hain Celestial Group has acquired the Linda McCartney brand (under license) frozen meat-free business from the HJ Heinz Company, including the manufacturing facility based in Fakenham, Norfolk.
East Anglia provides another “chicken nugget” of information in that Bernard Matthews Food Service has welcomed the new Government initiatives on school meals, and believes its new products will meet the more demanding criteria being set (by moped-driving TV chefs, presumably). The UK’s Office of Fair Trading has said that it will investigate the proposed acquisition of ice cream maker Richmond Foods by US investment fund Oaktree Capital. Now that the playing fields have all been flogged off, Food Advertising looks set to be the next target of a government determined to blame anyone but themselves for fat children.
The British Retail Consortium estimated that every week that England remained in the football World Cup UK consumers would spend an extra £124M on food and drink. Roughly a year after buying HP Sauce, Heinz decided to trade on its wonderful associations with British-ness by launched a campaign to "Save the Proper British Cafe" but drew the line at “Save the Proper British Food Production Unit” by shifting HP Sauce to Holland. After making it’s fortune with Chocolate and caffeine, Nestle joined the health craze by buying Jenny Craig, a weightloss company advertised by Kirstie Allie.
Britvic entered the FTSE250. And finally…. Cadburys were in court after their gigantic chocolate fingers were not nearly gigantic enough. “It is fraudulent to suggest a product is actually bigger that it is”, Leon Livermore, head of Cambridgeshire county council trading standards told the court.
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