Asda has slammed suppliers for over-forecasting promotional sales, creating strained relationships with retailers and excess unsold stock.

Industry and consumer groups have hit out at European Commission (EC) nutrition labelling proposals for inconsistency and failing to account for all available research.

The window of opportunity for UK food manufacturers to off-shore production to lower wage economies in eastern Europe is rapidly closing, according to the Unite trade union.

EU proposals to increase the proportion of energy from renewable resources such as biofuels could seriously threaten food supplies, according to European food trade association the CIAA.

The number of UK allergen-related recalls looks set to soar in 2008, according to a leading industry specialist.

Seafood giant Marine Harvest has implemented a new graphic-based traceability system to help manage food safety and quality risks along its supply chain.

Nestlé has announced the establishment of the Chocolate Centre of Excellence, the company's first research and development facility entirely dedicated to the development of premium and luxury chocolate.

Hybrid equity and debt finance provider Close Growth Capital has backed the £12M secondary buyout of the Blueberry Group, providing an exit for 3i, which backed the original buyout in 2005.

Fruit ingredients supplier Cobell has reported a three-fold increase in demand for superfruits, particularly blueberries, cranberries and pomegranates.

Finsbury Food Group is pumping £2M into kitting out a 1,858m2 bay at its United Central Bakeries plant to expand its speciality breads business.

Overseas demand helped food processors fill their order books last month, reflecting a wider trend within manufacturing as a whole, said the Confederation of British Industry.

Tesco has been working on sophisticated demand planning techniques, including advanced weather forecasting and gap scanning, to clamp down on availability problems.

Tate & Lyle is including a reference to food miles on cane sugar retail packs to indicate their impact on the environment, rather than declaring the carbon footprint of the products.

It is "relatively easy" to cover up dodgy dealings between 'rogue' supermarket buyers and suppliers because of the lack of transparency in trading terms, industry insiders have claimed.

Restrictions on guar gum imports into the EU are causing headaches for manufacturers and ingredient suppliers, who are now responsible for proving all consignments from India are free of the banned toxin pentachlorophenol (PCP).

The Carbon Trust has admitted that aspects of its carbon labelling scheme are in need of a rethink.

Employers that promote the health and wellbeing of their employees will increase the profitability of their businesses, according to Julian Hunt, director of communications for the Food and Drink Federation.

To satisfy the demand for locally sourced ingredients, convenience food supplier Greencore is sourcing traditional Bramley apples for its desserts from Kent grower Fourayes.

New proposals from the Food Standards Agency could change how certain words are used to advertise products.

Melanie Leech, director general of the Food and Drink Federation, has applauded the government for reducing the regulatory burden on businesses in last month's Budget but questioned its real benefits within the limits of EU regulation.

In a recent Food Manufacture on-line poll 70% of respondents expected the major UK retailers to stop their food and drink suppliers passing on price increases in 2008. Go to http://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk

Chilled food giant Bakkavör will boost its presence in faster growing markets and reduce its UK exposure in the next decade.

Wellness Foods, the new owner of upmarket health food brand Dorset Cereals, has promised to pump further investment into the business following last month's takeover.

The General Advisory Committee on Science (GACS) must ensure the Food Standards Agency's (FSA's) advisory committees operate transparently, with explicit risk assessment policy guidance, according to a leading academic.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) faces tough questions over its involvement in a prominent study into additives and hyperactivity that EU food safety watchdogs claim was poorly designed with unclear results.

Rising incidents of food poisoning related to the campylobacter bug are causing increasing concern to the Food Standards Agency (FSA), the Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food (ACMSF) heard last month.

The first certified sustainable palm oil should be available for manufacturers to buy by the end of May, according to bosses of the 'greenpalm' scheme.

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) is making changes in support of its Global Standards to address concerns from Tesco.

People, not IT systems, need to communicate to ease the administrative burden caused by supermarkets' competing product specification systems, according to a leading software supplier.

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Probabilistic risk assessments, originally developed for the chemicals sector, look set to be increasingly used to determine the risk to the population from the microbiological contamination of certain types of food.

During the recent curious incident of the cheese sandwich, it was reported that parts of the cheese industry were pitched against the Food Standards Agency (FSA). Was it Miss Scarlett with a cheese knife in the FSA's library, or was it Colonel Mustard with a milk churn in the dairy who caused the mayhem?

A former director at Geest, Andrew Mitchell, has set up True Foods in Yorkshire in a bid to get back to making more creative products.

In a bid to add some colour to black tie dinners, catering group Brakes has teamed up with outside catering business By George to create a new menu.

Booze has started to make a come-back as a core dessert ingredient - but nowhere near the levels it was in the 1980s, when recipes such as Rum Baba used to slosh around in the stuff. At least that's the opinion of French liqueur specialist Grand Marnier.

Pupils at Royal Docks School, Newham, were treated to spicy chicken and cajun wedges, lamb curry with rice, and vegetable pasta and chicken bravas when McCain Foodservice went 'Back to School' to officially launch its Purely Potato range.

In order to meet the demand for consumers who love the taste of cider, but aren't keen on drinking too much alcohol, Westons Cider is reducing the ABV of its Stowford Press Low Alcohol (LA) cider from 1% to just 0.5%.

With the spotlight on reducing the big four macronutrient nasties: sugar, salt, saturated fats and energy, from pre-packed processed foods in recent years, no food manufacturers seem to be tackling insufficiency in the intake of valuable micronutrients in consumers' diets.

Roberts of Port Dinorwic has doubled the size of the development kitchen at its North Wales headquarters as part of an ongoing investment programme.

Kepak Convenience Foods, a major player in the UK's £102M hot snacking category, is launching its Ugo's Deli Café Panini into the convenience sector with a £1.6M marketing campaign.

Burton's Foods is manufacturing new limited edition Toffee Crunch Fingers on behalf of Cadbury.

Confectioners and bakers are set to benefit from Food Design's new chocolate panning room. The company, which manufacturers toffee and fudge inclusions, can now help out new product developers by providing small amounts of chocolate coated ingredients for production trials.

In response to the trend towards healthy products, ingredients firm Rousselot has created nutrition, health and beauty product ranges containing Rousselot hydrolysed collagens (RHC).

The process of developing nutrition profiles to restrict nutrition and health claims on foods moved forward a step recently with the publication of scientific advice to underpin the system. It may not lead to demonising food but will undoubtedly cause further headaches for many across the food industry.

Manufacturers could make significant energy savings by making relatively simple and cheap modifications to their cold stores, blast chilling and blast freezing facilities to make them operate more efficiently. While the refrigeration used in retail displays and catering fridges offers the biggest potential for saving energy overall, manufacturing also has a lot to gain, according to the latest results from a three-year £1M research project.

United Central Bakeries (UCB) has improved the operational capability of its Bathgate factory by designing and installing a new chill/freeze refrigeration system with an innovative defrost solution.

Anglo Dutch Meats' (ADM's) manufacturing manager Oliver Wood has reduced running costs by over £12,000 a week since replacing an ageing nitrogen tunnel freezer for minced beef with an energy efficient Starfrost freezing system at ADM's plant in Eastbourne.

Lyons Seafoods has installed an impingement chiller to rapidly chill its cooked prawns as part of a large development at its Warminster site. A Frigopak Advantec chiller has been connected to existing Frigopak refrigeration plant and will operate at a very low temperature to accelerate the chilling process.

Users of packaging could be liable for unprecedented levels of fines for non-compliance with their obligations under the Producer Responsibility (Packaging Waste) Regulations, say lawyers.

The growth in plastics recycling capacity, and the prospect of non-bottle collection and processing in future, is inspiring UK converters to look at mono-material pack, lid and label combinations.

Raw material costs and retailer commitment to reduce the weight of packaging are driving the development of lighter closures as well as containers.

Closed Loop Recycling, owner of the Dagenham plant due to open in June, says it is already pursuing plans for a second plant "within an hour of Liverpool and Manchester".

Road pricing nationwide might be off the agenda following statements made by transport secretary Ruth Kelly last month, but those in the transport field fear it could still be adopted locally.

The Evolution corrugated board pallet is not the first to use the material, nor even the first from David S Smith Packaging (DSSP), but the company maintains it is a hygienic, cost-effective, environmentally-responsible and reliable alternative to timber.

This is the story of an old but wise pallet. Over the years, it has seen supply chain thinking evolve and lived through many changes.

Andy Lill (pictured left), factory manager, Rich Products

For most people, the thought of food adulteration conjures up images of Victorian England where everyday staples were often meddled with in order to keep costs down. Milk was frequently watered down, while chalk, plaster of Paris and even sawdust, were said to have been added to bread by bakers hoping to make their ingredients go a little further.

Few phrases send shivers down the spines of food and drink industry bosses more than 'product recall'. In handling anything from bacterial contamination to malicious tampering, get it wrong and the damage to a firm's budget and reputation can be severe. Well-handled incidents can boost public respect for a company and minimise losses and ideally systems should exist to prevent recalls or at least stop events from snowballing into a public issue. But there's often quite a gap between the theory and the practice.

I'd be surprised if all large food companies weren't using reverse auctions within two years, remarked Daniel Ball, business development director of e-sourcing specialist Wax Digital last year. He explained that many suppliers were interested in reverse auctions because it was a very transparent proposition, enabling them to check out the competition and avoid cost of sale.

Jamie Mitchell, md of Innocent Drinks, strides purposefully forward, acknowledging a football table to his right.

Child labour is not acceptable in the food industry. Neither is forced labour nor the many other forms of exploitation of workers. But it happens in various parts of the world.

Last year, Britain's food and drink companies installed around 100 robots. That's a sixth of the total number sold into the UK in 2007, says Dr Ken Young, head of the British Automation and Robots Association (BARA), which compiles the figures. "That is quite a large percentage compared to what it used to be. The food industry is doing quite well for robots at the moment."

ABB Robotics will give the European premier of its second generation FlexPicker delta robot at Interpack in Dusseldorf in April.

Ferdar, the Holland-based supplier of robotic automation systems, has opened a UK office in London. In over 20 years, Ferdar has completed 850 projects involving over 1,600 robots, with particular expertise in the food, dairy and beverage markets. Ferdar has also gained expertise in the cheese industry.

Schubert's new generation of automated packaging machines feature the latest vision systems which are specially designed to undertake a wider range of quality control checks. The company has developed scanners that can verify the pattern, colour and surface decoration of products, in addition to inspecting product height and position.

TM Robotics (Europe), the European robot sales partner of Toshiba Machine, has announced a new machine vision partnership agreement with UK firm PCS Industries. The arrangement offers customers an array of vision equipment and software products as well as the integration skills of PCS.

Seventy percent of Brits aren't eating enough fish, according to a recent survey of over 3,000 people carried out by supplement company Efamol. Fish are our only natural source of omega-3 docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) - nutrients that have been proven to keep hearts healthy - so these statistics are certainly cause for concern. But food processors are doing their utmost to turn things around by fortifying foods with omega-3 and reinventing popular fish dishes using species rich in fatty acids.

Campden and Chorleywood Food Research Association (CCFRA) has recently published Bioinformatics: a review of current and future applications in the food industry - Review 59.

Targeted at food scientists and technologists in industry and academia, Food Biodeterioration and preservation examines the breakdown of food by agents of microbiological origin.

The third edition of Food lipids: chemistry, nutrition, and biotechnology features new chapters on polyunsaturated lipid oxidation, total antioxidant evaluation, and tocopherol stability.

Common skin care ingredients are now becoming popular in the food and beverage sector.

The lack of food scientists and technologists in the food and drink industry is already acknowledged to be one of the biggest issues it faces. But it's one thing to lament the situation and another thing entirely to do something about it.