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The Economist's Innovation Forum pivoted from talk of Silicon Valley-style inventiveness as it brought its event to the Midwest for the first time Thursday.
Innovation requires equal thought in decades-old companies trying to stay afloat in a changing business world, The Economist China business editor Vijay Vaitheeswaran said Thursday morning.
The event gathered executives from companies such as Google and Exelon and drew more than 250 attendees to the Four Seasons Chicago to discuss how large organizations can stay nimble and creative to outlast a tidal wave of disruptors.
To start, panelists from UI Labs, Autodesk, Bell Labs and the Kellogg School of Management gave a primer in disruption. Even small incidents of disruption shouldn't be dismissed by businesses, said Caralynn Nowinski ⇒, executive director and chief operating officer at UI Labs.
“It's all the ‘little D’ disruptions driving the things that ultimately make the ‘big D’ disruptions happen,” she said. “We accelerate...Read more
Got an idea for a product? Bring an engineer into the process early, advises Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
“A lot a of people start writing down ideas and start raising money based on that,” the tech legend said in his keynote Wednesday during the Automate 2015 and ProMat trade shows at McCormick Place.
“Find some engineers that really think out of the box. Engineering involves such careful thinking and problem solving. Engineers are very good at — if you have a plan for a product — going home and coming up with better ideas for it than if you just had your own (idea) coming from business school.”
During the dialogue with Mitch Mac Donald, group editorial director for DC Velocity, Wozniak offered thoughts on topics from the price of the Apple Watch to keeping up with youth culture.
Side eye to the Apple Watch
“I'm a watch person. I'm open to the idea of watches that have technology in them, so I'm going to buy the absolute cheapest one they have,” Wozniak said. “It doesn't seem like...Read more
Genevieve Thiers ⇒ says successful women need to give back to other female entrepreneurs — and with a new investment fund, High Note Enterprises, she’s backing that belief with cash.
“Everyone says — and they’re right — that women that make it need to give back,” said Thiers, who co-founded and previously served as CEO of Sittercity.com. She said she’s using some of the money she earned from a partial merger with Bright Horizons Family Solutions in 2011 for the $150,000 fund.
With a dual goal of making money and boosting women entrepreneurs, High Note will invest in companies run by women who are solving problems for women, Thiers said.
An accomplished opera singer, Thiers said the name “High Note” is a nod to that, but also “that I ended my first company on a high note, so I want to give back.”
Thiers said she has already made a few small investments: $25,000 in MoxieJean, the Chicago-based resale site for baby, child and maternity clothing and accessories, plus $2,000 to $10,000...Read more
Startups that aim to disrupt markets get loads of investor attention, yet Kickstarter co-founder Charles Adler isn't keen on the term.
“The term ‘disrupter’ is kind of a silly one to me because it's usually a term that's bestowed on someone else from an incumbent,” Adler said. “So it basically assumes the other person is a five-year-old brat kicking someone next to them — being disruptive. Not a nice term.”
Adler spoke on a panel called “The Sharing Economy: Rise of the Collaborative Consumer” on Tuesday at The Executives' Club of Chicago's Leadership Circle Program at Mesirow Financial. Dean DeBiase, chairman of Reboot Partners and AKTA, moderated.
Panelists discussed, among other things, the roles that disruption and crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter play in the sharing economy.
Adler described Kickstarter as the “marketplace for the unmarketable,” saying that a lot of “super weird” projects on the platform today will be seen as normal projects in five to 10 years.
“There's this...Read more
When a trio of autism experts launched an education-technology startup for students with autism, none of them knew how to build an app, much less a company. But Katie Hench and her partners didn’t let that faze them when they founded Chicago-based Infiniteach in 2013. They introduced their first app in April 2014 and graduated from accelerator Impact Engine in January. In May, they will launch their second app, called Prismatic. Hench, a former special-education teacher and now CEO, explains what she has learned.
Q. How are you addressing the ways students with autism learn differently?
A. Students who are diagnosed with autism have deficits in social communication. They typically have more rigid behaviors and are often very visual learners. We’re using that visual learning to help them gain new skills in a really structured manner.
Q. How has the company evolved?
A. We’re using tablets and technology to reach every child regardless of where they live to supplement their individualized...Read more
Advances in technology have made it possible for just about anyone, even those who quit after one piano lesson, to explore music making.
That was the message of a panel of three music and music-technology experts who spoke during a Chicago Council on Science and Technology (C2ST) event Tuesday night. The event was moderated by Aaron Freeman, C2ST’s artist in residence and former host of NPR’s Metropolis and WTTW’s Chicago Tomorrow.
Music producer Doug McBride, owner of Gravity Studios in Wicker Park, cited Apple’s GarageBand program as an example of production at a user’s fingertips.
“It’s terrific that anyone can have that experience of recording and capturing their ideas and learning to make music,” he said.
Panelists expressed excitement about new tools and technology. Consider gTar, a smart instrument that teaches you how to play songs on the guitar. Users can download the gTar app and connect their smartphone to the device, and LED lights on the frets of the guitar show what...Read more


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The Weeknd has cancelled the entire After Hours 2022 Tour, including San Diego performance on March 13, 2022.
Official statement from The Weeknd. https://www.instagram.com/p/CVLJzsEFRgc/
The Weeknd's worldwide tour announcement comes just days ahead of the multi-platinum singer’s headlining Super Bowl performance, and also includes a handful of rescheduled dates shifting from 2021 to be a part of the After Hours World Tour in 2022
Tickets for the new tour begin sales on Feb. 8 at 10 a.m. local time via an official tour site. The 104-date tour starts Jan. 14 in Vancouver and wraps Nov. 16 at the O2 in London. For rescheduled dates, tickets are now on sale. And for fans who had previously purchased tickets, those will be honored for your corresponding rescheduled date.
RESCHEDULED DATES: All previously purchased tickets will be valid for the corresponding rescheduled dates.

domain: news


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Vehicle Fleet Market Dynamics in the UK
When Uber first hit the headlines, many thought it could spell the end of large fleets in the minicab and taxi industry. Rather, it was going to disrupt the established model and create individual drivers working for Uber on a virtually freelance basis and being responsible for their own vehicles.
The predictions about disruption were certainly right with long-established firms and business practices coming under threat from this new entrant to the market. This has been a worldwide phenomenon everywhere from the US to Asia but it has not been without its issues for Uber.
In many places, there have been demonstrations by other drivers incensed by what they see as a threat to their livelihoods and there are also reports of attacks on drivers and their cars. Add to this the widely reported internal problems at Uber and it could be that the company is facing a rocky road ahead.
It could also be that the service is evolving in ways in which Uber themselves hadn’t anticipated. For example, a number of entrepreneurs have recently stepped in to run their own fleets of cars and employ the drivers but use Uber to provide the basic infrastructure for them, thus enjoying the best of both worlds. Naturally, this does mean that these business owners are responsible for other costs like maintenance and fleet insurance but the efficiencies that using Uber offers in terms of logistics go some way to offset this. Of course, the traditional minicab fleet does still exist but a number of these are also starting to copy elements of the Uber model in terms of creating bespoke apps for their customers.
It’s also clear that the arrival of Uber and other similar services has stimulated a re-evaluation of the minicab industry by local councils and even governments, and it is sure to become more tightly regulated over the coming years. For example, in London there is a proposal to make all licensed drivers take both spoken and written English language tests, a move which Uber is challenging in court claiming that it could prevent up to 33,000 of the capital’s estimated 110,000 drivers from continuing to work.
How this will affect fleets remains to be seen but it’s not all bad news for car makers who may fear that a large proportion of their business could soon disappear. That’s because no matter what happens in the taxi sector, there’s one area that will always have a high demand for fleet cars and that’s the car rental business.
There’s also been a lot of talk recently about driverless cars and this is another area in which car rental companies are actively involved in planning for the future. Thus, it is possible that before long there will be a whole new category of fleet on offer and not just in the car rental sector.


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Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 Will Be Thinner Than iPad Air 2
Last week we told you that Samsung is allegedly busy working on a couple of successors for last year's Galaxy Tab S line of tablets with Super AMOLED touchscreens.
We should expect the new Tab S tablets to come in 8-inch and 9.7-inch options. Those are different screen size measurements compared to their predecessors, which are offered in 8.4-inch and 10.5-inch versions. The change has to do with Samsung using 4:3 aspect ratios for the Tab S2's displays, just like Apple always has, and like Google has with its Nexus 9 tablet.
We'd heard about another duo of upcoming Samsung tablets with 4:3 aspect ratios, the Galaxy Tab A and A Plus. So now it seems that those weren't just a test case for the new aspect ratio - Samsung has already decided to use it for more devices. The aspect ratio will change, the Tab S2 line will sport different resolutions compared to the original Tab S units. Exactly what those will be is unknown at this point.
According to the same rumor, is that both the Tab S2 8.0 and the Tab S2 9.7 will be thinner than the Apple iPad Air 2. That device's thickness comes in at just 6.1mm. Furthermore, the new tablets will employ metal frames, in order to make them have a premium feel.


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After testing two mobile-only plans during 2020, Netflix has decided to launch a R49 mobile-only plan in South Africa.
Other countries where this cheaper plan will be launched include Nigeria, Kenya and other sub-Saharan African countries.
With Multichoice's Showmax offering a mobile-only plan for only R39 per month, it's clear that these streaming platforms are now also targeting the lower-income groups across the continent. In a statement released by Netflix, the company said that its aim is to make it even easier for people to stream their favourite movies, documentaries and series.
The mobile-only plan is part of the bundle offered by Netflix. The other two are the standard and premium options, both also offered in South Africa.
Just like with the other two Netflix plans, subscribers will be able to create five different profiles on the mobile plan. This plan can be accessed via a smartphone or tablet, and streaming will be in standard definition.
Keela Robison, vice president of product innovation at Netflix, told News24 that they "always want to make it easier for members to access their favourite series or movies regardless of language, device, connectivity, or location. So partial downloading is now available on Android phones and tablets, and we'll begin testing in iOS in the coming months".
Image credit: CNet


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Google is currently working on this year's Pixel phones, dubbed -- Pixel 2 and Pixel XL 2. This years Pixel phones are expected to be much improved than last years. Report are that Google will announce the Pixel phones 2017 this fall, which is some time around the month of September, this is at the same time when Apple is said to unveil iPhone 8. Ahead of the official launch, Google Pixel 2 and XL 2 has been subjected to several leaks and rumours already. Adding to the rumor mill, a new concept video of Google Pixel 2 (Walleye) leaks online, which shows thinner bezels, dual cameras and much more.
Unlike last year, the Pixel phones 2017, codename Walleye and Taimen will be manufactured by LG confirmed a recently report. To recall, Google Pixel and Pixel XL was manufactured by HTC. Going back to the newly leaked concept video, the upcoming Google Pixel 2 shows thinner bezels as compared to its predecessor -- Pixel. Further, the video further shows sleek design, dual camera set up and so much more.
The leaked concept video further hints that the upcoming Google Pixel 2 will feature a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner which will be placed right below the dual rear camera set up. Not only that, the render also shows that there will be significant changes on the rear panel of the Pixel 2, when compared to its predecessor -- Google Pixel. The upcoming Pixel 2 is tipped to feature mono-tone rear panel unlike the Google Pixel which is designed with duo-tone glass and metal on the back.
The video further shows that the upcoming Pixel phone will come with dual camera at the back, unlike its predecessor. To recall, Google Pixel come with 12-megapixel sensor at the back, placed vertically and will be coupled with LED flash, which sits right next to the camera ring. While on the front, the handset features a 7-megapixel selfie snapper. The concept render further show that the device will possible ditch the 3.5 mm audio jack
Google Pixel 2, codename Walleye has been subjected to several leaks and rumours in the past few months. Rumours suggest, in terms specifications Pixel 2 will sport a 5.7-inch QHD+ display and will juice its power from an octa-core processor. Other rumours tip that the handset will come with 6GB of RAM coupled with 128GB of internal storage. It is also expected to come packed with 3,800mAh battery with fast charging support and IP68 certification for resistance against water and dust. It is quite obvious that the upcoming Pixel phones will be launched with the latest software -- Android O. This years Pixel phones will be the first ones to run on Android O operating system.
Further, Google is also planning to build its own mobile processor for the upcoming Pixel phones. As a part of the initiative, Google has hired a veteran chip architect from Apple -- Manu Gulati as Google's Lead SoC Architect. He helped the Curpertino major to build its own chipset back in 2009. By hiring Gulati, Google is reportedly focusing on building its own chip for this years' Google Pixel phones, dubbed Pixel XL 2 and Pixel 2. Not only that, Google is also looking forward to hire additional chip experts to improve the hardware set up of the upcoming Pixel phones.


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The British Foodstuffs business is booming.
The foodservice company, which employs more than 1,000 people in the Nairaands, is on a mission to help Indian companies grow in the region and become successful in the world’s largest food and drink market.
The company’s founder and CEO, Shree Krishna, said the business is a result of an abundance of talent and the support of local leaders.
“Our customers want to be able to shop from their home.
They want to come and see us in our restaurants,” Krishna told reporters in Mumbai, India, where he is in the midst of his fourth trip to the region to meet with local officials and companies.
Business is booming in the Indian states of Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand.
In Punjab, which was once the poorest state in India, the Indian government has invested more than $1 billion in the state’s economy, creating jobs, and more than 150,000 jobs have been created in the last year.
In Haryanasagarh, which has been home to some of India’s poorest communities, foodservice has helped lift the fortunes of farmers, who have lost many of their jobs.
Rajasthan, home to one of India´s poorest states, has also seen the growth of the industry, with nearly 2,000 new restaurants opening in the past four years.
Andhra Pradesh, where the government has been battling the worst drought in its history, has witnessed an uptick in demand for the foodstuff, with more than 400 new restaurants being opened last year alone.
Shree Krishna said that while the demand for foodstamps in the regions is rising, it is not enough to sustain the growth in the entire country.
He said he hopes the Indian companies will be able work with local governments to help expand the sector in the future.


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Capcom Japan recently teased an upcoming announcement regarding Street Fighter IV on their official website. With their “newwarrior” address hinting at…well…a new warrior in the Street Fighter IV universe, Capcom has had the internet abuzz with rumors and speculation on what they’re announcing on Sept. 29, 5PM Japan Standard Time. French gaming news site JV247 got the jump on Capcom with some allegedly leaked screenshots of a couple new characters and even a shiny new logo for Super Street Fighter IV. According to the screenshots, it looks like Capcom will be introducing T. Hawk and a brand new character, Juri, a female fighter who looks like she came straight out of Harajuku and obviously has no plans of reproducing thanks to Vega/M. Bison.
There’s no news yet on whether Super Street Fighter IV will be an entirely new title or if it’s going to be a DLC add-on, but Capcom Japan will have the official announcement pretty soon.


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False, predatory baby formula marketing milking off mums
Monday February 20 2023
In 2018, Milka Muthoya, a new mother, recalls being sent home with two jars of formula milk with every visit to the hospital for her postnatal care.
“I had absolutely no problem with my breastmilk production. But my three-month maternity leave had elapsed, and I had resumed work. This meant I leave expressed breastmilk for my new-born to take while I was away during the day. But he did not enjoy the milk and often refused to drink it and would wait until I got home to breastfeed directly,” Ms Muthoya recollects.
When she narrated her ordeal to her baby’s paediatrician, it was recommended that she switch from expressed breastmilk to an infant formula milk. “The baby might like it,” the doctor had opined.
In spite of the baby refusing the formula milk, on every consecutive post-natal clinic visit, the paediatrician switched up the formulas advising that the baby might like a different brand better.
Big formula milk companies are accused in a new study of using false and predatory marketing tactics and targeting health professionals including paediatricians, midwifery, and nutritionists to undermine breastfeeding.
The new study, Marketing of Commercial Milk Formula released in The Lancet last week, criticised the quasi-medicalisation of formula milk resulting from marketing manoeuvring over science and national policies, by an excessively powerful system of influence that generated demand and sales of its products at the expense of the health and rights of children.
The target group of this marketing scheme were found to be parents, medics and politicians.
Despite the proven benefits of breastmilk, less than half of infants and young children globally are breastfed in accordance with World Health Organisation recommendations to breastfeed for the first six months of life.
In comparison, Commercial Milk Formula (CMF) sales have increased to about $55 billion annually, with more infants and young children receiving formula products than ever.
The report said about 1 in 3 neonates in low-income and middle-income countries received pre-lacteal feeds (or formula), and only 1 in 2 neonates were put to the breast within the first hour of life.
“We report how CMF sales are driven by multifaceted, well-resourced marketing strategies that portray CMF products, with little or no supporting scientific evidence, as solutions to common infant health and developmental challenges in ways that systematically undermine breastfeeding,” said the team of researchers led by Prof Nigel Rollins, from WHO Department of Maternal, New-born, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing.
The scientists spoke of the industry’s exploitation of parents’ desire for good health and a good life for their children. They said a common approach by the CMF industry was to suggest a solution to parents’ concerns about infant behaviour, even though that behaviour according to the scientists is part of normal development.
The scientists warned that specialised formula such as that sold as comfort milks for hungry babies, colic, sensitivities, and prolonged sleep, further commodify infant and child feeding even though, according to the scientists, the offered solutions are scientifically unsubstantiated solutions for medical or quasi-medical problems.
They also criticised labelling on CMF packaging indicating superior brain development and others claiming to influence health outcomes as well as allergy de-risking, as misleading and not scientifically proven.
The scientists noted studies and systematic reviews showed no benefit of the ingredients added to these products on academic performance or long-term cognition and, sugar, sweeteners, emulsifiers, and thickeners were added to enhance taste and acceptability without thorough independent study of their health consequences in infants and young children.
The team recommended that product development be better regulated and health claims by CMF manufacturers be prohibited due to their potential for harm.
Oversight of CMF products, including their composition, quality control, and review of specific claims, generally falls under National and International Food and Nutrition Standards rather than pharmaceutical regulations.
Being classified as food products, the CMF industry is not obliged to provide evidence at the same level of certainty as international standards for medical interventions.
The report added that with sales stagnating in high-income countries through the mid-20th century, European companies successfully expanded these marketing strategies to Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas.
The scientists said the industry had systematically distorted science, captured health-care providers and parents, altered public opinion, and influenced policy makers. Through these divisive practices, CMF marketing impinges on the human rights of women and children, harmed their health.
“Brand X is being sponsored to the hospital. If it doesn't work [for the mom], we will recommend another one within the Brand X range.” revealed a doula from Johannesburg.
This seemingly professional advice influences mothers.


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The $1.23 billion GM Holden has invested to create the VE Commodore is the largest single commitment made in Australia to bring any retail product to market.
It is a big investment and a big risk for General Motors, given that petrol prices are rising and sales of large cars are falling. But much more is riding on the VE's success than GM's investment, as large it is.
If the Commodore fails to fire in this inclement market, the fallout will be extensive, both in industry terms and for the economy.
A worst case scenario - closure of the Elizabeth assembly plant - would put perhaps 5000 people out of work, billions of dollars added to Australia's import bill and more than a billion dollars stripped from its export income. Economic disasters don't come much bigger.
In its various guises, Holden has been one of the most important companies in the country for decades, especially in the 1950s when it vied with the old BHP as the most-profitable Australian company.
While that importance has been gradually eroded by the industrialisation of Australia and the rise of many other large employers and manufacturers, the timing of the release of the VE Commodore has once more elevated GMH to a crucial leadership role. It brings to mind the famous assertion by legendary GM chief Alfred P. Sloan: "When GM sneezes, America catches cold." Just swap "Australia" for "America".
The industry has made admirable advances in quality and efficiency since the government put its foot down in 1985 and started gradually withdrawing assistance. Yet, despite these improvements, the industry has never been more vulnerable.
Recent events have brought many automotive companies to their financial knees and threaten to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Over the past two years, rising petrol prices and the strength of the Australian dollar have combined to put the local car assemblers on death row.
While plunging new-car prices have created a car-buying feast that has resulted in four consecutive record sales years, the local makers are in danger of starving to death. The strong dollar has made imported cars cheap, with virtually all the growth in the market going to light and small cars at the bottom end of the market.
At the same time, high petrol prices and heavy personal indebtedness among consumers have made the large cars in which Australia has specialised for decades less popular and probably unprofitable.
It is an uninviting climate in which to launch a new big car; but that is GMH's lot. The plans were laid seven years ago and you don't redesign a car in just two years.
And it won't be just GMH executives who will be sweating on the Commodore's sales figures in coming months. The whole industry will be anxiously scanning the registration figures because the Commodore's success or failure may well determine whether there is a car industry in Australia by the time the current car industry plan finishes in 2015.
If the Commodore can spark the interest of its traditional customers, both fleet and retail, GMH will have a chance to recoup its big investment and continue to employ thousands of people in its South Australian and Victorian manufacturing operations. If the Commodore fails to fire and large-car sales continue to plummet at 20 per cent a year, as they have been doing, there will be a vastly different outcome.
Holden's Commodore is the biggest single consumer of locally made parts, even after the much publicised loss of some contracts to foreign suppliers. If the Commodore goes down, so does the local parts industry.
GMH has, fortunately, developed some solid export markets, especially in the Middle East, and is working up some opportunities in Korea and China.
As with Toyota, those deals will bolster its local sales and improve production efficiencies, but GMH knows only too well that no factory can rely indefinitely on exports taking 50, 60 or 70 per cent of output. Every factory must have a strong domestic base.
The industry produces about 350,000 vehicles a year, barely enough for parts suppliers to achieve competitive economies of scale. If the Commodore doesn't sell in the Australian market, there will be little reason to persist with local manufacture.
The Zeta architecture designed at Fishermans Bend for the car is intended as a world car platform for GM and is destined to go into production in other countries: the US, Korea, possibly China.
Should the Commodore seriously underachieve, it will be a simple matter to close the Elizabeth plant and import Commodores from wherever they can be built cheapest. And that will have repercussions for the whole industry. Ford, Toyota and Mitsubishi all rely on sourcing many parts from local suppliers that do have economies of scale, even at Australian volumes.
If their biggest customer shuts its doors, it will be making the same decision for the other assemblers, too.


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HSBC maintains buy on L&T Finance Holdings, target price Rs 130
Buy L&T Finance Holdings Ltd. at a price target of Rs 130.0 .
For the quarter ended 30-09-2019, the company has reported consolidated sales of Rs 3611.31 crore, up .47% from last quarter sales of Rs 3594.54 crore and up 11.24% from last year same quarter sales of Rs 3246.30 crore. The company has reported net profit after tax of Rs 174.51 crore in the latest quarter.
The brokerage has adjusted their FY20-22 estimated earnings by -3% to 21% in order to factor in lower tax outgo going forward. The company has delivered a stable September 2019 quarter performance. Loan book grew 19% YoY, while asset quality and margins remained largely stable QoQ basis.


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America, experts in super-sizing everything, have gone and topped the world’s ancillary revenue list as well.
In a Skift report that is no surprise to anyone, the three major US airlines are top performers, earning $38.1 billion in ancillary revenue in 2014, compared to the $31.5 billion earned in 2013.
IdeaWorks Company has released the numbers on airline ancillary performance for 2014, and despite airlines around the world increasing their ancillary revenues by nearly 21%, America had to go and be number one.
The company’s report considers the performance of 63 airlines around the world—both major flag carriers and low-cost—which disclose ancillary revenue in their financial reports.
“Ancillary revenue is an increasingly important indicator of commercial success, and a major contributor to the bottom line of airlines across the globe,” Sponsor of the report CarTrawler’s chief commercial officer Michael Cunningham said, writes Skift.
“The secret to unlocking this revenue stream can be found in the data that customers generate with every transaction.”
According to Skift, airline ancillary revenue was up by $6.6 billion in 2014 over 2013, and a whopping $35.65 billion more than the ancillary revenues of airlines reporting in 2007.


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Dixons Retail is taking the axe to its troubled Pixmania division in a bid to stem losses.
A “very difficult” half year at the business, which sells goods ranging from household appliances to luggage online, prompted Dixons to take a writedown of £57 million, almost all of which relates to the struggling business.
Difficulties at Pixmania tarnished an otherwise solid set of half-year results from Dixons, which owns Currys and PC World. The UK was in the black for the company in the first half of its financial year for the first time in five years, with a £5.6 million underlying profit. Dixons made a £6 million loss in the same period last year.
Dixons is set to be the main beneficiary of the collapse…


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Nobody is sweet on sugar anymore. Influential nutrition advocates have called it Public Enemy No. 1, the ISIS of public health, lurking even in innocent-looking salad dressings and peanut butter. Last November an additional five U.S. cities implemented taxes on sugar-sweetened sodas. And to create an inviting new target, the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee identified sweets and snacks as the largest contributor of added sugars.
Few dispute that too much sugar is bad for you. But as the war against it escalates and more food and beverage products are under siege, it’s a good time to examine what works and what doesn’t work in getting these industries to sell healthier products. To make a big dent in obesity, food and beverage companies and their opponents must shift their spending away from attacking each other and adopt a new playbook for engagement, one in which industry recognizes activists’ assaults as reflections of changing consumer attitudes and harbingers of new growth opportunities, and where vocal advocates use corporate performance metrics to motivate change.
Instead, the warring parties continue to skirmish according to the old model, with one side spending big on trying to get regulations enacted and the other throwing dollars at trying to avoid them. Several prominent public health organizations have pledged to spend an estimated $825 million over the next 10 years to promote sugar taxes, ban junk food advertising, change package labels, and do research related to healthier eating and food industry practices. Since 2009 beverage companies alone have spent approximately $200 million to protect their sugary signature products federally and locally. As threats of additional taxation loom, millions more are likely to be spent. But these investments only fatten the wallets of lobbyists and advertising agencies; they have not made Americans any thinner. According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an alarming 37% of Americans are obese, with half of the 50 states exhibiting obesity rates exceeding 30%
Perhaps the best example of how the industry-activist wars have played out is the push to tax sodas. The notion of taxing unhealthy foods was first unveiled in a 1994 op-ed piece in The New York Times by Dr. Kelly D. Brownell, former head of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. In 1998 the Center for Science in the Public Interest weighed in with its Liquid Candy report on sodas, which also called for a tax. In the intervening years, industry has rebuffed all efforts to impose taxes on sugar-sweetened drinks, spending an estimated $67 million since 2009 in 19 cities and states to defeat soda tax initiatives, according to CSPI.
But industry fortunes changed in November 2014, when the city of Berkeley, Calif., voted for a 1-cent-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. In 2016, Philadelphia followed with its own tax, as did Chicago, Boulder (Colorado), San Francisco, Oakland and Albany (California). Seattle’s mayor has subsequently proposed a 2-cent-per-ounce tax. Industry spending and lobbying failed to deliver their intended effect. Most disconcerting, this counter assault by the beverage companies has blemished the major strides and commitments they have made in introducing healthier and lower-calorie drinks.
Activists also have not been shy in spending on soda tax referendums. Former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg alone has spent up to $25 million on such proposals. But are such taxes the panacea that they are portrayed to be?
Virtually all the cities that have approved the sugary beverage tax have citizens with below-average obesity rates Poorer red state municipalities and rural areas exhibiting higher obesity rates would be unlikely to even consider such levies.
Mexico has served as the poster child for how sugary beverage taxes can work. Studies by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have concluded that the excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in Mexico resulted in a 5.5% reduction in purchases of the beverages in the first year and a 9.7% one in the second year. Contrary to these findings, ConMexico, an industry trade association (using data from research firm Kantar), found that there was virtually no impact on obesity rates due to the tax. It also showed that families were skimping on other grocery items such as soap, toothpaste and toilet paper to pay for the higher cost of taxed beverages.
An unintended consequence of such taxes in Mexico has been harm to small businesses. As reported in Diplomatic Courier, the Alianza Nacional de Pequenos Comerciantes (ANPEC) claims that between 30,000 and 50,000 mom-and-pop businesses, many of which make less than $5,000 per year, and thousands more small bakeries have been forced to close.
So instead of throwing money and missiles at each other, what can the food industry and its attackers do constructively to both improve public health and the industry’s top and bottom lines? How should the warring parties better spend the next billion dollars in their war over sugar? Here are five suggestions:
• Spend more on R&D. The food industry historically spends little on research and development and relies heavily on its marketing prowess. As the traditional iconic brands come under intense scrutiny, smaller portions and new better-for-you/lower-calorie versions will be necessary additions to their portfolios. Studies conducted by Hudson Institute have proven that these items are the real growth area for food and beverage manufacturers. The beverage industry has been expanding its portfolio of healthier drinks for several years, and its bottled water, lower-calorie versions, and smaller containers of the full-calorie products are having an impact. U.S. consumption of sugary beverages has slipped from 56 gallons per person a year in the late 1990s to below 40 gallons today, a level not seen since the pre-obesity crisis 1970s. Bottled water has replaced soda as the top selling beverage category as of last year. The food and beverage industries should be investing more in products like these, rather than in lobbyists and public relations campaigns.
• Be transparent. It’s time to guarantee that consumers can make more informed choices. Clear labeling about a product’s nutritional content is now the minimum ante. The fast-growing millennials consumer segment is demanding greater transparency and scrutinizing food labels as never before. In research by the Center for Food Integrity, consumers said they wanted authenticity and transparency about what’s in their food and put the responsibility for it squarely on the food industry rather than on scientists or the government.
• Clear up consumer confusion. According to segmentation data compiled by the Natural Marketing Institute, most consumers, except those who truly follow a healthy lifestyle, are either confused about or unaware of healthier eating practices. One-off scientific findings that later change, combined with an aggressive blogosphere that amplifies misinformation, accelerate consumer confusion. How bad is sugar? What foods can I eat or drink? Are artificial sweeteners as bad as they say? Not clarifying which information is credible, and letting misinformation spread, represents a sin of omission that reputable public health bodies need to clear up. One approach would be the creation of a joint public health/industry scientific body that sifts through research and identifies credible findings (including industry studies) for routing to the media. A Good Housekeeping-type seal on credible research could be offered so that consumers can sift through circulated information and identify what is trustworthy.
**• Jointly launch educational and public health initiatives focused on children’s developing palates.** Even before its soda tax, from 2006 to 2013, soda consumption among Philadelphia teens declined 24% and obesity among minority boys fell 11.3%. Why? Philly’s schools have been overhauling menus, introducing more water and milk alternatives, and increasing nutrition education. Also, local businesses in poor Philadelphia neighborhoods are voluntarily encouraging kids to make healthier beverage choices on their way to school. Such programs are a far better investment for both well-funded activist groups and food and beverage companies seeking to grow their sales of healthier products.
• Make upfront commitments for improvement. Although the soft drink industry has cut its calorie footprint substantially over the last 15 years and has pledged a 20% reduction in calories sold per capita by 2025, it has acted too late and has frankly been run over by the activist freight train. Companies that sell products containing higher levels of sugar should take advantage of public health activists’ focus on sugar-sweetened beverages to get ahead of potential existential threats by declaring their commitment to lower calories and sugar, selling smaller portions, and communicating more transparently to their consumers.
More than the taxes, bans, and lobbyist armies, these five strategies can make a profound difference. But they require some détente between the two sides. They also require a big, uncomfortable shift in the way activists and food and beverage companies think, operate, and engage with each other.
They can start by understanding where their interests overlap. Activists need to understand that food and beverage companies, like all other companies, need to grow sales and make a profit. They need to remind corporations that great-tasting healthier items will be moneymakers. And food and beverage companies can’t afford to ignore what activists are saying; they provide useful insight into what consumers are turning their attention toward. This shift in focus, away from old playbooks and defending turf, will go a long way toward focusing both sides on the real challenge at hand: reducing obesity in a capitalistic society.


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Colombia has faced harmful trailing perceptions. Today, the country hardly at all resembles its long-held image for violence, guerrilla warfare and drug trafficking. But, that perception sticks. The real Colombia is a foreigners’ favorite: extremely vibrant, colorful, an ecological wonderland, friendly people, great food and much more. Since launching the colorful Colombia is Passion! campaign, the country has literally boomed off the charts, garnering international awards for its economic reforms and progress. Its doors to foreign investment, tourism and exports have burst wide open, largely due to the new realities at home, but in some part as a result of the Government and private sector’s resolve in partnering to overcome the bad image sooner rather than later. Domestically, the project has provided a much needed rallying point for the Colombian people, uniting them as only an international soccer match could do. The United Nations (WTO) has singled out Colombia as a role model for other nations facing similar challenges.
“The Organization believes that Colombia’s case can serve as a role model for other countries in similar circumstances.”


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Patterson Companies Inc. said Monday that it will pay roughly $1.1 billion in cash for Animal Health International in a deal that will double Patterson's veterinary business and give it extra heft in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.
With Animal Health, the Mendota-based Patterson will gain an animal product distribution company with about $1.5 billion in sales and $68 million in annual profits. Animal Health sells products for pets, horses, beef and dairy cattle, poultry and pigs. It works with more than 1,000 manufacturers.
The deal, expected to close during Patterson's first fiscal quarter, will be financed via a loan and a separate revolving line of credit.
Patterson, which has about $4.3 billion in annual revenue, plans to divest its $468 million medical/therapy equipment business in an effort to pay for the acquisition. It has hired Bank of America Merrill Lynch to explore the alternatives. If sold, proceeds will help pay down the debt for the new Animal Health purchase, officials said.
Patterson's medical business produces about $64 million a year in profits, but is "not a core part of the company's long-term strategy," officials said in a statement.
Patterson plans to focus on the dental and veterinary supply business. It is the latest in a multiyear turnaround plan designed to boost growth and profits.
News of the Animal Health purchase comes six months after Patterson announced that it would buy Holt Dental Supply Inc. in Waukesha, Wis. In 2013, it also bought a British veterinary supplier named National Veterinary Services Ltd. that doubled Patterson's veterinary business. That addition has since enjoyed significant profit gains, the company said.
Liking such results, Patterson is doubling its veterinary segment once again. With Animal Health, Patterson expects to save $20 million to $30 million over three years as duplicative expenses are cut.
"This is a transformational move for Patterson Companies," CEO Scott P. Anderson told analysts during a conference call Monday.
"Acquiring Animal Health International firmly establishes Patterson in the production animal health market, in addition to building on our already strong presence in the companion pet market," he said. "This acquisition is a key part of our previously disclosed strategic intent to take a broadened view of our markets and position our businesses to generate profitable growth and increase shareholder value."
Not all investors were convinced. The stock on Monday fell 72 cents, or 1.5 percent, to close at $46.36 a share. Since November, the once-troubled stock has been trading at levels not seen since 2005.


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The firms are working on prototypes utilising chlorella ‘algility’ powders which will offer ‘wellbeing’ drinks to consumers in France and elsewhere. Some of these will be exhibited at the Universal Exposition in Milan in October as part of the northern France, government-backed Vitagora gastronomy project.
Roquette’s ‘algility’ chlorella typically contains 45% protein, 20% fat , 20% carbohydrate , 5% fibre, and 10% vitamins and minerals and in lieu of specific authorised health claims is marketed around ‘general wellbeing’.
“Until now, our collaboration was focusing on formulating brand-new recipes, and we were supplying Algama with samples,” Emily Delommez, Roquette marketing communications manager, told us.
“Our aim with this cooperation is to get food products made with ‘algility’ microalgae into consumers’ hands faster.”
Algama co-founder Gaëtan Gohin said Springwave was set for its commercial premier this month. “It is being produced right now,” he relayed. “Springwave will be sold in July, exclusively in Paris and in several hotels and SPA of ACCOR group.”
It will retail for between €2.4 and €4 depending on the retail outlet.
Of Springwave’s market emergence, Gohin observed: “Springwave is positioned as a better-for- you drink, a revitalising beverage. Spirulina provides vitamin B2. According to literature, B2 vitamin can contribute to help the body to lower cell oxidation and fight fatigue.
“It is also rich in marine magnesium and this mineral is also known to help the body fight against physical fatigue.”
Approved European Union health claims for these nutrients can be found here.
It is estimated there are between 200,000 and 800,000 microalgae species, but only 30,000 have been studied and described. Only about 30 are in commercial use.
Aside from its core chlorella business based at its Lille HQ, Roquette is experimenting with other algae at a facility in Germany.
Beside beverages, it is aiming at baked goods, dairy, high-fat culinary foods and supplements with demographics like the elderly and sports people with its microalgae offerings.
The Japanese and US supplements markets stand out as the biggest users of a chlorella supply estimated at about 5000 tonnes annually.
About 90% of that comes from open pond-sourced material in China and Asia, a system where quality control is more challenging.
Roquette is marketing three ‘algility’ chlorella versions: An algal flour that can reduce fat and manage lipid profiles; an algal protein combined with fibres and unsaturated lipids; and a powder aimed at food supplements and aquaculture.
Roquette, which began life more than 80 years ago as a specialist in starch extraction from corn, has broadened its raw materials to include wheat, potatoes and peas, and moved into areas like polyols and proteins.
Other microalgae players include Allma, Arora, Solazyme, Algosource Technologies and DSM-Martek.


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With China and the United States embroiled in an all-out trade war, companies are scrambling to find new overseas suppliers, even as they prepare to pass on the higher costs to their customers.
BALTIMORE — When AT&T recruiters compete for young talent on college campuses, they want to show how the old telephone company has become a modern media firm.
Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, is worried that too many of its workers are having health conditions misdiagnosed, leading to unnecessary surgery and wasted health spending.
PHILADELPHIA — Comcast agreed Tuesday to sell its 33 percent stake in online streamer Hulu to the Walt Disney Co. for at least $5.8 billion — and perhaps billions more — when a deal closes in five years, a strategic win for Disney in the global battle for eyeballs and one that Comcast will h…
DETROIT — Eighteen large institutional investors in General Motors banded together Friday to tell GM they want the carmaker to take aggressive action to protect federal fuel economy standards.
President Donald Trump’s promised crackdown on the H-1B visa had a dramatic impact last year, according to recently released federal data that shows immigration officials denied nearly one out of every four requests for new visas for skilled foreign workers.
Kraft Heinz plans to restate its financial statements for 2016, 2017 and the first nine months of 2018 after discovering employee misconduct in its procurement practices, the food giant said last week in a regulatory filing.
WASHINGTON — Jobs are now growing at a faster rate in Trump country than they are in the Democratic-leaning urban and coastal areas that long had been a main driver of the U.S. economic expansion.
Lands’ End is back at Oak Brook Center mall in Oak Brook, Ill. — this time, outside the shadow of Sears.
Target does more than just sell merchandise to shoppers. Since 2016, it also has operated a separate, in-house media company that creates digital advertising for a host of major brands and businesses, not all of whom sell products at Target stores.
More states are allowing banks and credit unions to entice customers to build up their savings by offering them lottery-like prizes. But even with a chance to win money, most customers still aren’t saving.
The Tesla Model 3 remained the best-selling electric car in the United States last month by far, according to estimates from website Inside EVs.
It’s not your imagination. Your job may be killing you.
For the last year, my 3-year-old Dell PC has been automatically forced to update its version of Windows 10.
CHICAGO — Heinz has long been the undisputed king of ketchup, with Hunt’s a distant runner-up and falling farther behind.
CHICAGO — McDonald’s is weighing whether to jump on the plant-based bandwagon, as Burger King prepares to roll out meatless Whoppers nationwide.
With its latest quarterly report, Apple’s next big thing — its services business — remained a source of strength for the tech giant as it continues to deal with signs of ongoing weakness affecting iPhone sales.
DALLAS — AT&T lost more than half a million TV customers and about 83,000 subscribers to its streaming DirecTV Now service in the first three months of this year, the company reported Wednesday.
PHILADELPHIA — Two weeks ago, it looked like the last chapter in the 57-year story of the only remaining independent bookstore on the University of Pennsylvania campus was written.
CHICAGO — Garrett Popcorn Shops says it guards its recipes so closely that only three employees have access to the information, by verifying their identity via thumbprint.
Boeing won’t say when it expects its 737 Max to fly again, after two deadly crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed 346 people.
Successor to Best Buy’s turnaround leader will start in June
High-paying blue-collar jobs lifted incomes in West Virginia, New York and Illinois last year, even though the states lost residents, while farmers and government workers shared the pain of more stagnant income in Nebraska, Maryland and Washington, D.C.
Over Jayna Fey’s 15 years in the workforce, she’s been called too assertive, too comfortable, too “frowny,” too familiar. Accurate or not, she used to make self-deprecating jokes about these traits.
U.S. Bancorp leaders on Wednesday joined the parade of top bank executives with an upbeat outlook for the U.S. economy just as it’s on the verge of the longest expansion ever.
Governors helped the U.S. Treasury Department choose nearly 9,000 economically distressed “opportunity zones” where people can get a tax break for investing in certain businesses and properties.
To win back customers after bankruptcy, Sears wants to go back to the future.
The label on the grocery package contains the reassuring words, “sustainably sourced.” But what does that actually mean for the environment?
DETROIT — Pickups are overpriced and are sliding on quality, some consumers say.
WASHINGTON — Wells Fargo & Co.’s embattled chief executive, Tim Sloan — who has struggled to get the giant San Francisco bank past a seemingly endless series of customer abuse scandals — is retiring.
The Boeing brand is taking a beating in the aftermath of two fatal 737 Max crashes in less than five months. The aerospace giant is confronting a withering backlash from regulators, politicians and investors, as well as airline executives and consumers.
I keep getting notifications from a sweepstakes website on my iMac.
Target has announced a sweeping set of goals to reduce its carbon footprint that for the first time puts pressure on its suppliers to do the same.
Neel Kashkari, the Minneapolis Fed president who has been a vocal opponent of interest rate hikes, laid out new thinking on a key benchmark as he expressed support Friday for the central bank’s decision to hold rates in place, likely for the year.
For the first time, a higher percentage of households in the U.S. subscribe to a digital streaming service than to traditional pay television, according to the results of a new survey released last week by Deloitte.
LOS ANGELES — A fierce struggle over automation has erupted at the Port of Los Angeles, as local union officials representing some 12,000 dockworkers demand that one of the world’s largest shipping firms abandon a plan to introduce driverless electric cargo trucks.
MINNEAPOLIS — Target is embracing the blur — and it paid off in its best full-year sales growth since 2005.
New vehicles are piling up on U.S. car dealer lots, creating concern just as sales are expected to sputter.
GLENVIEW, Ill. — Robin Ross, director of culinary at Kraft Heinz, doesn’t need data to know how much consumer tastes have changed since processed food reigned supreme.
Last year proved to be a comeback for long beleaguered SeaWorld Entertainment, which saw its first annual gain in attendance since 2015, the company reported Thursday.
The number of Americans who shop online for mattresses — one of the most personal and expensive possessions in a home — continues to grow and reshape the business of selling them.
Al Overland is not saying you should refer to almond milk as nut juice. He’s also not saying you shouldn’t.
Looking like a delegation of toasters from space, a generation of electrically powered, self-driving mail trucks will roll out of a suburban Detroit industrial park later this year. Their mission: revolutionize mail and package delivery.
CHICAGO — The shades were drawn last month when a glittering array of architects presented their plans for the massive O’Hare International Airport expansion in a high-ceilinged downtown lecture hall. Other glass walls that would have let people peek in were papered over.
I’ve been running Microsoft Office 365 on a desktop computer and two laptops. But after a few months, the program suddenly stopped saving images that I’d previously added to Word documents. When I called up the documents, the photos were gone.
A Chicago pharmaceutical company that grabbed national attention for raising the price of its skin medications has filed for bankruptcy.
KENNETT SQUARE, Pa. — That “locally grown” produce for sale in your neighborhood grocery store?
Walgreens has agreed to pay $60 million to settle allegations that it “knowingly overcharged government health care plans such as Medicaid for prescription drugs,” said Stein Mitchell Beato & Missner, the Washington-based law firm that launched the whistleblower lawsuit against the pharm…
The nation’s biggest airlines have launched a battle to outdo each other with free onboard entertainment, and it looks as if the winners are music- and TV-loving passengers.
Shortly after noon Wednesday, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk tweeted about entropy and heat death of the universe. But that’s a long way off. For now, troubled Tesla is alive and kicking.


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On Oct. 11 and 12, Oris, the Swiss watchmaker that launched the Limited Edition Wings of Hope Big Crown Pilot’s Watch this past summer, invited trade media and watch retailers to Wings of Hope to learn more about the watch and Wings of Hope.
The two-day event began with media spending the day at Wings of Hope for an up-close view of the organization’s mission and to learn the story behind the Oris-Wings of Hope partnership.
“Oris is a shining example of a company who is doing well by doing good,” says Wings of Hope President and CEO Bret Heinrich. “They care deeply about using their high-quality products and respected brand to shine more light into the world. Wings of Hope is proud to partner with Oris.”
On day two, more than 70 watch retailers visited Wings of Hope’s headquarters at Spirit of St. Louis Airport. The meeting kicked off with remarks from Heinrich, followed by a video featuring the watch during a recent trip to Wings of Hope’s partner in Ecuador, Alas de Socorro, by Heinrich and a Wings of Hope team. Long-serving volunteers and former Wings of Hope pilots, Ed Schertz and Jay Rickmeyer, provided a brief history of the organization’s Medical Relief & Air Transport (MAT) Program against the backdrop of the MAT Program’s very first plane, a Cessna 206. MAT pilot, Phil Koch, joined Director of Human Resources and the MAT Program Angela Walleman and Aircraft Maintenance Manager Steve Johnson in showcasing the newest addition to the MAT fleet, a Piper Navajo, which has increased the MAT Program’s flight range to an 800-mile radius from the nonprofit’s St. Louis headquarters — besting by 200 miles the flight range of the fleet’s two Senecas.
The two-day event concluded with the watch dealers joining Wings of Hope staff and volunteers in packing meals for Kids Against Hunger.


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Pharmaceutical group GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has put soft drinks brands Lucozade and Ribena up for sale, giving rise to a bidding war in excess of £1bn, according to reports.
Belgian GP plans to back the company, according to a document by the Dutch competition authority
Fresh capital will be used to accelerate Funnel's operations in the US and invest in its technical teams
MACSF co-invested with the GP in a spin-off from Vocalcom Group, an Apax France portfolio company
Marston is a judicial services group, which recovers funds on behalf of taxpayers and businesses


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How the Port of Dover is empowering Britain’s economic prosperity
2023 was another record-breaking year for the Port of Dover – confirming the Port’s position as Britain’s premier trade and travel gateway to Europe. What are Britain’s busiest port’s priorities for the year ahead?
The Port of Dover, a vital economic artery of the United Kingdom, has long been synonymous with exchange, adaptability, and innovation. As the shortest crossing point to Europe, the Port is a champion of Britain’s position as a global trading power and empowers one-third of the nation’s trade with its largest single trading partner, the EU.
The Port of Dover’s year in travel and trade, in numbers
- Freight, car, and coach volumes processed at the Port of Dover in 2023 was equivalent to 30,000 miles of traffic or 1.25 times around the circumference of the globe. This is a huge sum that underlines the efficiency of the operation based in just 0.68 square miles of land.
- 8.4 million passengers travelled through the Port – with over 2m passengers passing through the Port during the 6-week summer holiday period alone, returning Dover towards its pre-pandemic tourist volumes; one of the first travel gateways to achieve this. Despite the large-scale return to pre-pandemic tourist volumes, the average processing time at the border was 41 minutes during the peak hours and 23 minutes overall.
- The Port of Dover’s cargo terminal imported 148 million bananas and 9 million melons into the UK.
- The cargo terminal also saw a doubling of grain export volumes from 2021 – to 81,500 tonnes.
EU Entry-Exit System
The Dover-Calais/Dunkirk route carries £144bn of trade and 33% of the UK’s trade in goods with the EU and has remained the ferry route of choice for hauliers and passengers since the UK’s decision to leave the EU. This is due to Dover’s irreplaceable location on the shortest sea crossing to mainland Europe and the resultant capacity, speed and service frequency it provides.
As well as the critical need to avoid disruption to tourist passengers, the efficient movement of these goods is paramount for economic prosperity and growth.
The Port of Dover continues to work with UK and European Authorities to shape the EU entry-exit system, calling for a remote and digitally led solution to mitigate risks of a suboptimal implementation of the scheme, which is currently due for Autumn 2024.
2024 and beyond
The Port of Dover is also looking ahead to the opportunities 2024 will bring – its work with best-in-class universities to drive innovation through AI and machine learning to optimise operations, welcoming passengers bound for the Olympics in July and kicking off two significant projects to grow its business at both its Western and Eastern Docks. Additionally, alongside its ambitious agenda for the near term, the Port is also focused on securing long-term prosperity for the nation and has launched ‘Port of Dover 2050’, its programme to develop a strategic long-term master plan to become the UK’s most seamless, sustainable, and tech-enabled port.
If you would like to learn more about the Port of Dover, its current agenda and ambitions for the future, get in touch at firstname.lastname@example.org
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Just in case you wanted a phone that was shaped like a Pringles chip
A mere handful of hours after press images of a purported curved device from Samsung leaked out, the manufacturer has released initial details on the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Round. The device packs a 5.7-inch display just like the Galaxy Note 3, but this one has a not-so-subtle curve to the entire device that distinguishes it from other “flat” phones.
Samsung says that it has also developed new software experiences to take advantage of the curved design such as tilting the phone while it’s sitting on a table to check notifications, battery life and the time. Throughout the interface Samsung is working to make the software feel more at home on a curved display, offering tilt-based interfaces for some apps.
Beyond that wacky curved form factor, the Galaxy Round’s screen is 1080p resolution and is powered by a 2.3GHz quad-core processor paired with 3GB of RAM and a 2800mAh battery. We’re also looking at a 13MP camera and the same Android 4.3 software experience you know from other Samsung devices.


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Agero to Divest its Connected Vehicle Services Division to SiriusXM Radio Inc.
MEDFORD, MA--Aug. 15, 2013: Agero, Inc. announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement under which SiriusXM Radio Inc. will acquire Agero, Inc.'s connected vehicle services division.
The connected vehicle division of Agero is a leading provider of innovative telematics services for automakers.
"As the automotive telematics industry has evolved, connected vehicle services have become increasingly focused on integration and infotainment, and we believe that SiriusXM is perfectly positioned to take these capabilities forward in this changing market," said Dave Ferrick, CEO of Agero. "While telematics has been an important and growing part of our business, this divestiture allows us to focus our resources in our roadside vehicle assistance, claims management and information services which will allow us to best serve our clients and their customers in a fast-changing marketplace. I would particularly like to thank the dedicated associates of our connected vehicle division for their remarkable contributions during our ownership of the business. On behalf of the shareholders and the senior executive team, we wish them, together with SiriusXM, much success as they move forward in this exciting industry."
Agero currently works with 70% of the top automotive manufacturers in the US and 8 of the top 10 automotive insurance carriers. With this divestiture, the company will continue to accelerate the development and delivery of new services to enhance its leadership position in roadside assistance, consumer affairs, claims management and related new services.
The transaction is subject to the expiration or early termination of the Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust waiting period and other customary closing conditions, and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2013. Agero is being advised in the transaction by TAP Advisors.


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Shekar Natarajan is chief supply chain officer of American Eagle Outfitters. He joined the retailer in 2018.
Source: Julie Stapen Photography
American Eagle Outfitters wants to be more like Amazon.
Not to get in the business of selling everything from shoes to pet food to toilet paper. But to master a business function that became critical for retailers during the Covid-19 pandemic: the supply chain.
That’s where Shekar Natarajan, American Eagle’s chief supply chain officer, comes into the picture. Since he joined the apparel retailer roughly 3½ years ago, the company has acquired two supply chain businesses for hundreds of millions of dollars and began swiftly building out a logistics platform that others companies — even its rivals in the apparel industry — can utilize, too.
It’s a bet that American Eagle can lead the industry into a new territory of vertical logistics and dilute costs. Its peers will either emulate the model and play catch-up, or lean on American Eagle long term.
American Eagle’s goal, according to Natarajan, is to “Uber-ize” the global supply chain, thereby making it a shared service for retailers. His belief is that brands that compete for shoppers in clothing, makeup or home goods shouldn’t also be competing over things like quicker delivery windows and cardboard boxes.
Instead, if enough businesses work together and pool resources, a conglomerate of retailers could be shipping out just as many packages daily as Seattle-based e-commerce behemoth Amazon, and hopefully at a profit, Natarajan said in a recent sit-down interview.
He calls American Eagle’s communal supply chain platform the ultimate “frenemy network.”
“The only way that you could actually have Amazon-like scale, Amazon-like costs and Amazon-like capabilities — you have to share,” said Natarajan. “Collectively, we can have the same [package] volume as Walmart. … And that way, companies are only competing on what they do best, which is the product, marketing and customer experience.”
American Eagle created a graphic to visualize how small- to mid-size retailers stack up to e-commerce behemoths Amazon and Walmart.
Source: American Eagle
The coronavirus pandemic accelerated an existing opportunity for American Eagle, which reported record revenue of $5 billion in fiscal 2021, up 33% from the prior year. As sales ballooned, so did e-commerce revenue. American Eagle’s digital sales represented 36% of total transactions by the end of 2021, compared with 29% two years earlier.
That means shipping more packages to customers, handing them fewer shopping bags at the cash register and shifting inventories around to meet newfound demand on the internet.
At the same time, backlogs and shortages have snarled the global supply chain due to labor constraints, temporary factory shutdowns and skyrocketing costs to manufacture and transport goods — to name just a few obstacles.
American Eagle isn’t immune to these challenges. As a result, under Chief Executive Jay Schottenstein, the company fast-tracked its vision to create a streamlined model that can offer retail partners help on everything from ensuring orders with multiple items are packaged together, to speeding up home deliveries.
“This strategy was laid out pre-pandemic,” Natarajan said. “We just accelerated the entire journey by almost four years.”
In May of 2021, American Eagle acquired AirTerra, a Seattle-based parcel shipping start-up, for an undisclosed amount.
Six months later, it announced it would be paying $350 million to purchase Quiet Logistics, which operates a handful of distribution centers around the United States to help fulfill shipments for brands including menswear retailer Mack Weldon, athletic apparel start-up Outdoor Voices and bedding maker Boll & Branch.
Those companies, along with a handful of others, remain clients of what is now known as the Quiet Platform, the internal logistics branch of American Eagle. The division is run by Natarajan and a small-but-growing team that stays at arm’s length from the core retail division. It recently added Saks Off Fifth, the discount department store, to its roster of customers.
According to Natarajan, retailers sign multiyear deals to be part of the Quiet Platform. He declined to comment on the financial arrangements.
CEO Schottenstein said on an American Eagle earnings conference call in early March that the company’s two acquisitions were already translating into cost savings, cementing a new “growth platform” for American Eagle.
The efforts aren’t going unnoticed on Wall Street, either.
“For the many retailers that are investing in their supply chain, acquiring upstream like this is not that common,” said Corey Tarlowe, an equity analyst at Jefferies. “This is truly unique.”
Tarlowe said the investments should help American Eagle over time to improve its inventory management, mitigate risk for markdowns and ultimately boost profit margins. The greater economics of scale the company can achieve, the better, he said.
To be sure, investors are waiting to see more proof points, and it shows in the stock’s performance in recent months, which is lagging the broader industry.
American Eagle shares are down roughly 60% since news of its AirTerra deal first surfaced in late August. Year to date, the retailer’s stock has fallen about 33%, compared with the S&P 500 Retail ETF’s loss of about 16% in the same period.
‘Not a level playing field’
Before joining American Eagle, Natarajan had stints at major consumer-facing businesses including PepsiCo, Walt Disney Co., Walmart and Target — oftentimes within the supply chain division.
Those experiences offered him clearer perspective on the competitive advantages that some of the biggest retailers in the industry have, he said, but also the disadvantages for so-called midsized retailers that do less than $40 billion or so in sales each year. At $5 billion in annual sales, American Eagle fits the bill.
“I was always worried about what was going to happen to retailers in the middle,” he said. “Because it’s not a level playing field.”
American Eagle’s chief supply chain officer, Shekar Natarajan, wants to create a logistics network that is better for the end consumer.
Source: American Eagle
And so rather than creating a network solely for American Eagle’s benefit, he worked with Schottenstein to create a business that, should it grow big enough, could stack up against Amazon’s logistics arm, or at least offer brands another option.
“The reality is none of us own our supply chain,” Natarajan said. “We manufacture goods in factories that are shared right across retail. We move them in ships that are shared across businesses.
“But shared capabilities — whether they’re technology capabilities, fulfillment capabilities or transportation capabilities — are the future of this industry.”
American Eagle’s chief operating officer, Michael Rempell, said the apparel retailer — including its intimates- and swim-centric Aerie business — is already more effectively managing inventories and labor, thanks to its Quiet logistics business.
“Not only are we shipping less packages and it’s costing us less … but [orders] are getting to customers 30% faster than they were before,” he said in an interview. “We see it as a tremendous business opportunity,” for both American Eagle and for the Quiet Platform as a stand-alone business, Rempell added.
Bryan Eshelman, a managing director in the retail practice at global consulting firm AlixPartners, said he can see the logic behind American Eagle’s unique approach.
Retailers that attempted to build out supply chain capabilities on their own in the thick of the Covid pandemic saw those efforts “come back to bite them,” he said, in large part because it’s so costly to go it alone: “There needs to be a better solution.”
American Eagle clearly made investments that were “bigger than its own needs,” Eshelman said. But that will likely put the retailer in a stronger position in the future, particularly as supply chain disruptions persist, he said.
American Eagle won’t be vying with other retailers over space for its goods on trucks and planes. It’ll be pitching its own operations to its rivals.
American Eagle has projected its logistics business to contribute around 5 to 6 points to the mid-teens revenue growth rate it’s calling for in fiscal 2022. It also expects its supply chain business to break even on profitability this year.
In the coming months, Natarajan is focused on onboarding more businesses. The Quiet Platform counts about 50 customers today but Natarajan hopes to grow that base closer to 250, he said.
“I’m essentially trying to create Amazon-like capabilities and cost advantages, without being Amazon,” he said.


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It’s been known for awhile that the PS4 has been doing well for Sony. With around 36 million sold, there are almost twice the number PS4s in the hands of consumers compared to the Xbox One in a similar timeframe. So much so that Microsoft has resorted to reporting the number of active users on Xbox Live and Windows instead of actual sales figures. However this is not why Microsoft has moved to reporting monthly active users (MAUs) At Microsoft’s Xbox Spring Showcase, Xbox boss Phil Spencer explained why.
“The number of people in the last 30 days that have engaged with an Xbox Live game on either Windows or Xbox 360 or Xbox One is the critical factor for our team to gauge our success, because that’s what our partners [game publishers and developers] want. Our partners and gamers, they want the largest collection of active gamers who are buying and playing games,” he told attendees according to GamesIndustry.
“That is the health metric of any service that you want to talk about. What’s your monthly active users in the space? It’s not how many consoles I sell. If I sold a console two years ago and now it’s in the closet collecting dust, that’s not good for the gamers.”
In fact, Spencer claims that it’s a risk to the company to use MAUs as a metric of success due to its dependency on ensuring Xbox Live works as reliably as it should, something that’s been a challenge of late.
“If we have some Live issues like we had in the last week, that’s not great for our MAU count. That directly hits us,” he explained.
“If we go a long stretch without having great games on our platform, that will hit MAU. That will negatively impact MAU. It’s great that we’re seeing our strongest MAU growth ever… We’re incredibly proud of that, but we know we have a lot more work to do. We pick this metric not to hide something. In fact, I think that we’re more exposed by picking a number that actually shows how many people are really using our platform, using our service, every month and reporting that publicly.”


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Garrett’s Automotive Cybersecurity Solutions Receive Industry Recognition in China
Garrett Motion was recently awarded the 2022 Automotive Innovation Technology Award in China for its connected vehicle cybersecurity software solutions (Intrusion Detection System and Security Operation Center). The award was presented to Garrett by AI Automotive Manufacturing, a professional Chinese media of automobile information, manufacturing and technology at the 2022 International Intelligent E-Mobility Innovation Forum.
This is another industry recognition in 2022 presented to Garrett’s cybersecurity solutions for its unique algorithms and advantages in China, following the 2022 Outstanding Automotive Security Software Innovation Enterprise Award in September. The judging panel was comprised of a combination of automotive media editors, experts and general public voting.
“The award is demonstration of our innovation achievements in automotive cybersecurity,” said Wu Jun, General Manager of Garrett’s Connected Vehicle business for the Asia-Pacific region. “At Garrett we are committed to providing solutions that help safeguard connected vehicles against cyber-attacks. With over 20 years of experience in cybersecurity in the industrial, aerospace, and automotive industries, and a deep understanding of automotive industry, we work closely with OEMs and suppliers to provide comprehensive intrusion detection cybersecurity solutions.”
Garrett’s advanced automotive cybersecurity solutions can assist auto manufacturers stay ahead of threats and effectively optimize and protect connected vehicles by offering differentiated tools such as Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and Security Operation Center.
Garrett’s cybersecurity solution has already been implemented on mass-market production vehicle in 2022 with both global and Chinese local automakers
As a global leader in automotive cybersecurity software, Garrett is committed to joining force with customers and other key players in the industry on emerging threat detection as well as generalized areas like best-practice industry standards.


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TGR is stoked to announce the brand-new TGR Killington Outpost, a new retail footprint in Killington, Vermont. Where the Jones brothers learned to ski, Vermont is very near and dear to our hearts. Working with our team that runs the Stoke Mobile on the East Coast, we are opening our first shop-in-shop on the East Coast. The shop will feature TGR favorites and even some Vermont exclusives that are only available in the shop. Situated in the heart of Killington, the Outpost has classic TGR memorabilia, tunes, and of course our collection of films.
Open Tuesday through Sunday, 11am to 7pm at:
2841 Killington Rd.
Stay tuned to our social channels for more popups, events, and stoke!
For the second time in a little over a year, the main cable of British Columbia's Sea to Sky Gondola was cut by an unknown vandal. The incident occurred at roughly 4 a.m. PDT on Monday, September 14th, according to General Manager Kirby Brown. In an interview with CBC, Brown said that "this event mirrors last year's event in a very eerie fashion," and went on to note that "this individual has no regard for their own life and limb. They wanted to do what they did, they did it swiftly, they did
Yes, these are real. Patagonia photo. If you've bought a pair of Patagonia's Road to Regenerative™ Stand Up® Shorts recently, then there's a chance you have a cheeky message hidden on the tag. You've likely seen this image circulating on social media, and it turns out it's no photoshopped fake. Patagonia's Public affairs confirmed their sneaky embroidery with a Q&A on the Adventure Journal, stating that you can find the phrase "vote the a**holes out" on a super limited run of the Road to
Say HELL NO to an open pit gold mine on the South Fork of the Salmon River. Meg Matheson photo. Despite being adored by kayakers, rafters, anglers, and hikers, and home to incredible wildlife, Idaho's South Fork of the Salmon River in might be the new home of a massive open-pit gold mine. Two Canadian companies—Midas Gold Corporation and Barrick Gold—are proposing to operate an open gold mine right in the headwaters of the South Fork, risking irreversible damage to this fragile


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In sharing this article from the blog of my new book, Donut. You can visit the blog here
Since the book, Donut, was released last week, I have received encouraging comments from people who have read it during the previous edits. The hard copy came out pretty fine.
Its matte laminated cover with spot and raise has flaps on either side. the clear colour illustrations came out well on the glossy paper and the prints were fine. those who have handled it say it’s “quality.” I thank God for that, and I know that the best is yet to come. Thank you all!
As I said earlier, EatyourDonut will feature details of the launch and distribution of the book to young people that are already anticipating it. It’s an online community for the young people who will “Eat their Donut” and step into fullness. It will feature forum-starter discussion topics, comments, feedback from readers, news about the distribution tours/campaigns, testimonies and upcoming plans/follow-up strategies.
So, first, the book will be formally launched on Sunday, 21st December 2014 at the Alexander Brown Hall of the prestigious University College Hospital, Ibadan. It will be a closed-event where stakeholders of the project will appreciate God for the publishing of the book and commission the project for the “field”.
Updates and pictures of the event will be put up as soon as they are ready. Kindly pray along.


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McDonald’s and Starbucks are closing all their outlets in Russia, joining the exodus of western brands that has followed Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
When the first McDonald’s opened in Moscow in January 1990, it was seen as one of the markers of the end of the Soviet Union, with over 30,000 people queueing up to buy a burger. On Tuesday, though, McDonald’s said it would temporarily close all its 850 restaurants in Russia and suspend other operations in the country.
Hours later, Starbucks said that the local licensee which operates its 130 cafés in Russia would also “pause” operations immediately. The US coffee chain had said last week that the outlets would remain open, but that it would donate their royalties to humanitarian relief efforts for Ukraine.
Russia and Ukraine together accounted for about 9 per cent of McDonald’s revenues last year, or more than $2bn. The two markets contributed less than 3 per cent of the burger group’s operating income, as wholly-owned restaurants such as it largely has in both countries are less profitable than its franchised operations.
Chris Kempczinski, McDonald’s chief executive, told employees and franchisees that it was “impossible to predict” when McDonald’s would be able to reopen its Russian locations. The company was experiencing supply chain disruptions as a result of the conflict and would continue to monitor the “humanitarian situation” in the region, he added.
The Chicago-based burger chain had already shut down its roughly 100 McDonald’s restaurants in Ukraine.
McDonald’s is the latest in a string of companies to put its business on hold in Russia, but the Golden Arches stood out as one of the American brands that became a symbol of the post-Soviet era.
Earlier this week, Levi Strauss — whose blue jeans were coveted on the black market in Soviet Russia — also said it would suspend commercial operations in Russia.
In his letter on Tuesday, Kempczinski said the situation was “extraordinarily challenging” for a global brand such as McDonald’s.
“For 66 years, we have operated with the belief that communities are made better when there’s a McDonald’s nearby,” he wrote, adding that fast-food chain employs 62,000 people in Russia and serves millions of customers there each day.
“At the same time, our values mean we cannot ignore the needless human suffering unfolding in Ukraine,” Kempczinski said in a memo to employees and franchisees.
McDonald’s will continue to pay its employees in Russia, he said. Kevin Johnson, Starbucks’ CEO, said it would “provide support” to the nearly 2,000 people in Russia who depend on Starbucks for their livelihood.
Consumer brands have diverged in their response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as they struggle to respond to growing pressure from western employees, consumers and investors while doing the right thing by their Russian workers and customers.
Yum Brands, owner of Pizza Hut and KFC, said on Tuesday that it would pause investment in new restaurants in the country and redirect all profits from its existing operations there to humanitarian efforts while it assesses possible further changes. Nearly all of its 1,000 KFC restaurants and 50 Pizza Hut locations are operated by franchisees.
Last Friday, the $280bn New York State Common Retirement Fund urged McDonald’s and other companies including PepsiCo to consider pulling out of Russia in response to the crisis.
The fund, which owns about $410mn of McDonald’s stock, said that ending its operations in Russia “would address various investment risks associated with the Russian market and play an important role in condemning Russia’s role in fundamentally undermining the international order that is vital to a strong and healthy global economy.”
Shares in McDonald’s, which have fallen by 13 per cent in the past month, were up slightly in afternoon trading in New York. Starbucks stock, down 10 per cent in the past month, was also little changed.
Additional reporting by Polina Ivanova in London


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ATLANTA (Sept. 27, 2:30 p.m. ET) — Continuing its promise to build up the worldwide capacity to produce bio-based mono ethylene glycol for its PET bottles, Coca-Cola Co. is partnering with an Indian company to build a second bMEG plant, this one in Brazil. The partnership is part of Coke’s plan to have plant-based resin in all of its plastic bottles by 2020.
Plastics News' experts discuss trends impacting the recycling of plastic materials analyzing market conditions, opportunities, threats, regulatory activity, and sustainability trends' impact on supply. View analysis of leading recyclers, resin price and production trends, and recycling rates as well as perspectives from industry thought leaders regarding market trends.Learn more


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This year marked the graduation of the first cohort of fashion design students, from the Lebanese American University’s BA in Fashion Design (LAU). The 16 graduates showcased 127 looks, with designs ranging from womenswear, menswear, and sportswear to knitwear, embroidery and textiles. Earlier this month LCF, LAU and Elie Saab came together to celebrate the collaboration and the students’ successful graduation. London College of Fashion has been collaborating with LAU and Elie Saab for the past 4 years supporting the curriculum. This graduation is an exciting example of international collaboration and how LCF work at institutional level.
Students staged their first collections, which were very diverse and included couture-inspired pieces and practical, casual styles. By working with specialist artisans and ateliers, the show highlighted LAU’s design program provides students with an opportunity to be a part of the international fashion scene.
Head of LCF Professor Frances Corner attended and spoke at the event where she thanked the LAU and Elie Saab for the collaboration, which enabled the co-creation of an innovative curriculum embedded in the cultural landscape of Beirut and the Middle East. She said:
Here at London College of Fashion we believe that fashion as a discipline can be utilised to drive change, and improve the way we live. Our partnership with Lebanese American University and Elie Saab embodies our values. The high standard of the work shown throughout the programme is not only an inspiration for us here in London but also for fashion in Lebanon and the Middle East.
Designer Elie Saab commented:
I have long dreamed of giving back to my country. I wanted to share my experience and knowledge with the pool of young talent, but in the last fifteen years the difficulty had been to set up a structured platform where students can study, learn and perfect the right skills they need to attain degrees of international standards.
LAU president Dr. Joseph G. Jabbra also thanked Elie Saab and LCF, for their continuous support and congratulated the graduates wishing them success in the future. LAU and Elie Saab have invited LCF to continue working with them on a new collaborative commitment.


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Compact accommodation targets offshore Middle East rigs
HB Rentals has introduced a new 18-ft (5.5-m), four-bed accommodation module for the Middle East offshore market at ADIPEC.
This is designed to meet demand in the region for a smaller, lighter accommodation module, the company said. It was designed, developed, and manufactured at HB’s plant in Aberdeen, within five months.
The ability to stack and link differentiates the A60 DNV unit, the company added, suiting clients operating with limited deck space on certain rigs or others that are governed by specific weight restrictions during operations.


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AS EVERY Cosmopolitan reader knows, size does indeed matter – especially when it comes to the size of the magazine itself.
Publisher ACP is banking on a bigger book to entice readers back to the ailing title.
Circulation fell by 18.7 per cent to 165,301 copies, according to Audit Bureau of Circulation figures for the 12 months to June.
The publisher is adding 100 pages and is backing it up with television ads next week.
The ads will depict readers weighed down by the bigger value Cosmo, which will hold its price at $7.20 until November.
Gavin Larkin, the managing director of Cosmo’s ad agency, The Brand Shop, said: “It’s really about dramatising in a fun way that there’s more to Cosmo than ever before,” he said.
ACP has increased the size of other titles but this is the first time it has deployed a “sustained bonus book-size strategy”, as Pat Ingram, ACP women’s lifestyle group publisher, put it.
It is also Cosmo’s first “significant” TV ad campaign in six years. Mr Larkin said: “You have to be out there to remind people you exist.”
Simon Davies, head of print buying at OMD, said: “That whole younger end of the [female] magazine market has been hit hard by discretionary spending. It’s only going to get tougher.”
Stablemate Cleo’s circulation slumped 12 per cent to 149,256. “It’s an important market as they [younger women] tend to move onto the other titles,” he said.
Ms Ingram pointed to Cosmo’s stable readership as an indication that “young women are reading it as they were before but have been sharing it with friends in this tighter economy”.
But if the monthly market for younger readers has been hit hard then ACP can take some comfort from Grazia. Five issues after launch, the weekly fashion magazine is selling “around 100,000 copies”, Ms Ingram said. This is 30,000 ahead of target. Brandshop was given the Cosmo brief in the wake of its launch campaign for Grazia.
The magazine market is waiting to see if Grazia will squeeze the circulation and ad revenue of other women’s titles. To date, rival Pacific Magazines says it has had “no impact” on either. Pacific commercial director Peter Zavecz said the number of ads in Grazia had halved to about 30 since launch. “That’s where we have them pegged. As an advertising proposition it’s compelling to some clients but it’s not affected any of our titles. From what our major clients tell us they are just reallocating their ACP money to accommodate Grazia,” he said.


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The group’s managing director Mike Benner spoke at BeerX, the association’s festival which showcases independent craft brewers, and revealed that four out of five of its members expected increased turnover this year, and one in six expected a 25% boost.
“People are optimistic for the future, and investing in their businesses. There is confidence in the market place. Local jobs are being created,” he said.
Benner spoke of the struggles the industry has against new legislation, but welcomed a beer duty freeze in the Budget.
He revealed that 12.3% of savings available thanks to recent duty cuts were spent on pub acquisitions by small brewers last year.
“We are still seeing pubs close but those that are staying open are better,” he added.
Benner praised craft brewers’ contribution to local communities, having created 930 jobs last year alone.
Craft now boasts 7% of the UK beer market, according to SIBA’s latest reports, with the percentage of canned craft beer now representing 1% of the market and expected to rise “significantly” this year. The proportion of cask sales shrinking in comparison to cans and keg, which is also set to see strong growth.
Benner said global breweries have realised the opportunity that craft beer offers.
SIBA saw growth from its members last last year, with more than 3 million hectrelitres produced by its members.
Modern consumer values will continue to drive the craft beer boom in upcoming years, according to Enterprise Inns’ chief executive.
Speaking at the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA) BeerX festival, Simon Townsend said he’s expecting ‘significant growth’ in the sector.
“The local consumer who wants authenticity, provenance and transparency plays into the hands of local independent brewers,” he said.
Recent research by the PMA’s sister title MCA found that 95% of licensees said their customers are interested in locally brewed beers.
Townsend continued: “It’s not just location the research reflects, it’s the knowledge and authenticity as well.
“We need to make it more of an experience. It’s not just about being local it’s about being authentic and trusted. Local is not the answer on its own.”
And Townsend said more can be done to grow the category.
“Local brewers can help pubs to make more of the pub and beer experience. Pubs need to know about the service, presentation and information to understand the category,” he added.
SIBA’s latest survey found that four out of five of its members expected increased turnover this year, and one in six expected a 25% boost.
Also speaking at BeerX, Stephen Gould, managing director of Everards Brewery, said the growth should be “embraced”.
“I don’t think we’re at the stage where there are too many breweries. The fragmentation of the industry is a positive.
“There will come a point when there are too many, but we aren’t there yet. As there are more and more independent breweries we will have to adapt, so that rather than treading on each other’s toes brewers are collaborating.”
Gould said new Government drinking advice of a maximum of 14 units a week is dangerous to the industry.
“We need to be very watchful that alcohol isn’t demonised. A small amount of alcohol consumption is proven to have health benefits,” he said.
Rupert Thompson of Hogs Back Brewery, echoed his concerns.
He said: “Alcohol advice is a threat. We have got to address it otherwise it’s likely we will be dismissed.
“We have to be very proud of what our industry does - the broader benefits and social cohesion. We have to stand our ground on this”
Thompson also urged the industry to focus on education of craft products to grow the category.
“If people can understand what it is then we will make great progress,” he said.
“They might not be everyone’s cup of tea but Brew Dog are doing some great things in their pubs. The level of knowledge and level of passion is almost unprecedented.
“I’m sure that growth will continue, but we do need to look carefully at sustainability and profitability,” he added.


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Welcome to the jungle. We’ve got fun and games…well you know how it goes.
Net Entertainment drew a crowd of anxious bystanders at the 2015 ICE Totally Gaming show in London when the company unveiled its newest Slot Game, Guns ‘N Roses.
This is something completely different for NetEnt and for the band. Guns ‘N Roses has entered into its first licensing contract to be featured on a Slot Game. The band has sold 100 million records and is highly recognizable around the globe.
During an interview with CalvinAyre.com, Per Eriksson, CEO of NetEnt, said:
“Well, we have launched branded games with films titles in the past and we thought we need to make something different. We’re always ahead and we want to have innovations and with this brand; it’s an iconic brand. What can I say this is perfect for us and I’m so happy to have this iconic brand for Net Ent.”
“Internally, we have something called “The Innovation Week” so direct after ICE , we have our innovation week where we have the whole company involve in that. And we live, breath innovation the whole week. Of course we do it the whole year round but this particular week we have a lot of things going on in the office and we have at the end of the week, we have a Net Ent’s den where me and the board members are meeting up with new ideas and the winner gets a trip to Las Vegas and the funny thing is that every year, we just come out with crazy ideas. And it does not to do only with new games it could be for example, new ways of taking care of customers coming in to the office.”
Guns ‘N Roses will be released in 2015 and LCB was there to catch the big moment of NetEnt’s Guns ‘N Roses Reveal!


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Apple Inc. is delaying the shipment of its AirPod wireless headphones, saying it needs more time to deliver the product to consumers.
The $159 headphones, introduced last month, had been expected to ship by the end of October. Now, Apple
“We don’t believe in shipping a product before it’s ready, and we need a little more time before AirPods are ready for our customers,” an Apple spokeswoman said Wednesday via text message.
In reviews, the AirPods have scored high marks for their simplicity and ease of use, but the devices are technically complex. They include a custom-designed Apple chip, touch sensors and infrared sensors that detect when the AirPod is inserted into the ear.
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