Ambient foods

Size matters in packaging

01-Apr-2011 - Smaller packaging could become a manufacturer’s best friend, according to data monitor company Mintel.

US firm wins British safety award

01-Apr-2011 - There are many potential applications for the US-based Sentry Protection Products system, which won an award at last year’s IMHX materials handling show. The company’s Rack Sentry 100mm cut-out product won the Racking & Storage category of the Design 4 Safety Award at IMHX.


Accidents ‘on the rise’

01-Apr-2011 - Forklift truck-related accident rates are likely to rise, according to Jungheinrich UK’s group health and safety manager, Peter Scott.

Arco buys consultancy and training firm

01-Apr-2011 - Safety expert Arco is now extending into safety management services with the acquisition of ARC Associates UK – one of the UK’s most experienced safety, health and environmental consultancy and training organisations.

Save your skin

01-Apr-2011 - Severed fingers, crushed skulls, exploding offal cookers and slips trips and falls: is it a House of Horrors freakshow? No, it's a list of just a few of the recent accidents in the food and drink manufacturing sector.

Wales is a winner on waste

01-Apr-2011 - Environment minister for Wales, Jane Davidson opened consultation on the ‘Food Manufacture, Service and Retail Sector plan’ for waste last month. She did so during a visit to Wales’s first commercial-scale anaerobic digestion (AD) plant at Premier Foods’s RF Brookes factory at Rogerstone Park, near Newport.

Stand-off

01-Apr-2011 - Geneva has a rich history. The earliest stages of St Peter's Cathedral there date back to 1160. A famous hotbed for Protestant revolutionary zeal in the 16th18th Century and home to church reformer Calvin, the European headquarters of the UN is also renowned for being the nexus of human rights activity.

Free funds for business innovation

01-Apr-2011 - The Technology Strategy Board is making an investment of £6.25M available to UK food and drink firms to stimulate innovation in the sector.

Subdued grocery sales

01-Apr-2011 - Sales in the grocery sector rose at the slowest rate in two years, according to the Confederation of British Industry’s (CBI’s) latest Distributive Trades Survey (from February 28 to March 16).

Full force of the law

01-Apr-2011 - January marked the end of the two-year transition period for flavouring regulation EC 1334/2008, which means firms are expected to have completed any changes necessary to comply with the new law.

Opinion

Making food family fun

01-Apr-2011 - As an industry we spend a great deal of time and money developing ‘healthy’ food solutions and menus for schools and support the ‘food’ education of children in school. However, once a child leaves the school gate there is very little support and, in many cases, that education stops when he or she gets home.


Small but perfectly formed

01-Apr-2011 - Dorset Cereals has added three new product lines to its brand: handy muesli packs, impulse cereal bars and Good Honest Crunch.

Santa Maria gears up for boom in Mexican food

31-Mar-2011 - Mexican is becoming a favourite ethnic cuisine in the UK, according to Sweden-based manufacturing group, Santa Maria, which is gearing up to cash in on the trend.

Management buyout of Northumbrian Fine Foods

31-Mar-2011 - Managers at Northumbrian Fine Foods have bought the company off private equity owners and plan to invest in the business in a bid to push turnover above £12m in 2011.

Unilever says Colman’s investment may cut jobs

30-Mar-2011 - Unilever says it is spending around £2.6m to upgrade production and expand production at its historic Colman’s mustard factory in Norwich, but admits that it could shed up to 20 jobs as a result.

The decline and fall of canned foods?

21-Mar-2011 - Some parts of the canned foods industry are doomed, according to a new report from analysts at research firm Key Note, which predicts that total UK volume sales will continue to fall, despite a predicted rise in sales value.

Game, set, match Boparan?

17-Mar-2011 - Ranjit Boparan is one step closer to taking over Northern Foods after announcing yesterday that he now controls over 70% of the convenience food group’s shares, although one analyst said the industrial logic of a tie-up with Greencore would have been "more compelling".

Bee venom honey maker stung by FSA ruling

14-Mar-2011 - A producer of honey with added bee venom has described the Food Standards Agency (FSA’s) rejection of UK - and by extension EU - licensing for his product under the novel foods regulation as “hard to rationalise”.

Browne’s Chocolates future hangs in balance

11-Mar-2011 - The future of Harrods chocolate supplier Browne’s Chocolates hangs in the balance as insolvency practitioner Neville & Co examines its books.

Greencore calls time on Northern romance

09-Mar-2011 - Greencore said this morning that it does not intend to make a revised offer for Northern Foods to rival Ranjit Boparan’s 73p/share offer, which means the Midlands businessman is one step closer to tying the knot with Northern shareholders by March 16th.

Own-label woe puts Premier jobs at risk

07-Mar-2011 - Premier Foods plans to close its distribution centre in Chandler’s Ford, Hampshire as it rationalises its south coast operations, while the firm has also rebuffed rumours of a management change.

Crisp competition drives Kettle expansion

07-Mar-2011 - Kettle Chips will shortly begin work on a £6.8m investment in extra production facilities at its Norwich base, in a move that could create up to 35 new jobs.

World’s hottest chilli owner calls for fire-breathing Dragon

03-Mar-2011 - The owner of a Grantham-based startup that claimed a Guinness World Record for the world’s hottest chilli in March 2010 is calling for investment in his business.

Race for Northern Foods could go to wire

02-Mar-2011 - The battle between food titans Greencore and Ranjit Boparan to take over Northern Foods could still go right to the wire, despite the expiry today of a deadline set by the latter for Northern's shareholders to formally accept his bid.