Beijing promises to get tough on heath food industry
The China Food and Drug Administration has promised to get tough on health foods before, with little result. This time, it seems, it is serious.
The recently-reformed CFDA has promised a five-month campaign from May to September to crack down on illegal activity in the health food industry, part of a broader drive by authorities to stamp out corruption and unethical business practices. Continue reading »
Poland: Cistercian monks go to market
Jesus never came across as a big fan of markets – as he showed when he chased the moneychangers from the Temple – but now a group of Polish monks is looking to enter, albeit indirectly, into Mammon’s unholy precincts by floating on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.
A company called Produkty Klasztorne (Monastery Products), which pays Cistercian monks a licensing fee to use their trademark, recipes, and raw materials, is listing on the exchange’s smaller companies’ alternative market.
Africa’s rising food imports
A rising middle class, expanding population and stagnant local agricultural production are driving up Africa’s food imports. Bad luck is partly to blame. Weather-related damage has hit rice crops in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Niger and Madagascar. Foot and mouth disease has hurt Egypt’s bovine sector, and cassava – one of Africa’s major offerings to world agricultural trade – is being felled by a fast-spreading virus.
But policy volatility is also at fault. Nigeria – Africa’s largest rice importer – announced a hike in import taxes last year which prompted a sudden rise in purchases. And across Africa, weak infrastructure hinders agri-markets. Continue reading »
AB InBev: losing its fizz in Brazil
Brazilians must be broke – they’ve even stopped drinking beer, it seems.
Anheuser-Busch InBev on Tuesday blamed disappointing profits in the first quarter on lower beer volumes both in the US and Brazil.
Total volumes fell 4.1 per cent after a hefty 8.2 per cent drop in beer volumes in the Latin American country. Continue reading »
Guest post: how fridges will transform India’s milk market – and change lives
By Tassos Stassopoulos of AllianceBernstein
Evolving trends in emerging markets are not always driven by macro-economic policies or demographics. Sometimes, something as simple as a fridge can change millions of people’s lives and re-define an entire industry.
This is exactly what’s happening in India’s milk market. The world’s second most-populous nation is also the world’s largest market for milk, yet less than 20 per cent of households own a fridge. The popularity of the white stuff in India, combined with the proliferation of refrigerators from a very low base, are perfect conditions for a milk boom, driving by the unique consumer situation in this market. Continue reading »
Tariko reels in vodka maker CEDC
It took him a long time to reel in his trophy, but it looks as though Russian alcohol and finance magnate Roustam Tariko has finally landed Poland’s Central European Distribution Company, a leading regional vodka producer.
In an announcement on Monday, Nasdaq-listed CEDC said that it was going into Chapter 11 proceedings which will result in Tariko’s Roust Trading owning all the shares of the reorganised company. Continue reading »
Corporate watch: República del Cacao on the origin of taste
Looking much like the sketches from Charles Darwin’s “Voyage of the Beagle”, the wrapper illustrations on the chocolate bars made by Ecuador’s República del Cacao make much of the traditions and history of Ecuadorian chocolate, and of the adventures and journeys of discovery made by its pioneer chocolatiers.
Now República del Cacao is embarking from its own humble origins on a similar voyage of discovery. Continue reading »
Bolivia: calling all gastro-tourists
Tourists associate Bolivia with dizzy heights, blindingly white salt flats and Aymara women in flouncy skirts, plaits and tiny bowler hats. But haute cuisine? Not so much.
Unlike neighbouring Peru, which has pioneered a new Andean cuisine that has charmed Europe and the United States and attracted a valuable new class of tourist – the foodie – to the country, Bolivian “fine dining” tends to mean foreign food.
But Claus Meyer, the chef behind Denmark’s Noma, thrice named the best restaurant in the world, is determined to change that. Continue reading »
Chart of the week: who is developing a taste for the bubbly?
By Irene Madongo and Rob Minto
When it comes to new markets for top-class wines, most people tend to think of China buying up France, by the bottle and by the vineyard.
So when it comes to champagne, where are the big growth markets? The Brics? To an extent, yes. But there is one country high on the list that might surprise: Nigeria, which is expected to see the second biggest increase in sales volume over the next five years. How come? Chart of the week takes a look. Continue reading »
Corporate watch: Africa’s Zambeef leaps from south to west
It began 20 years ago, carting meat around Lusaka in the back of an ageing Land Rover. Since then, Zambeef has grown into one of the largest companies in Zambia’s booming economy. Now it hopes to replicate its success in west Africa.
The FTSE AIM traded company, whose primary listing is on the Lusaka Stock Exchange, is a curious entity in the modern food industry: a near fully vertically-integrated operation which produces, processes, distributes and retails, all in-house. Continue reading »
Philippines’ San Miguel: not as impressive as it seems
San Miguel Corp, the increasingly diversified Philippine conglomerate, surprised on the upside on Thursday by announcing consolidated net income in 2012 of 27.6bn pesos ($677m), up 57 per cent on 2011 and exceeding analysts’ expectations.
It is easy to take the figure as another sign of the success of San Miguel’s daring diversification strategy, in which the 122 year old company has expanded rapidly from its core food and drinks business to take in fuel, power and infrastructure. Continue reading »
SABMiller: Ghana ripe for cassava beer
Multinational brewers have been doing a roaring trade in Africa lately, but with normal lagers too expensive for many consumers there is now an increasing focus on products for the mass market.
SABMiller has already rolled out its lower-cost cassava beer in Mozambique (called Impala). Now it’s launching a cassava based beer in Ghana, to be brewed by its local subsidiary, Accra Brewery, and called Eagle. Continue reading »
PE group chickens out of India Nando’s deal
South African-based restaurant chain Nandos looked set to take flight in India, taking advantage of the nation’s booming restaurant scene and an emerging middle class with a well-developed taste for spicy food — and as a result attracting interest from international investors.
But now beyondbrics has learnt that an attempt by private equity group New Silk Route to acquire a majority stake in the group’s Indian franchise has fallen through — raising questions about Nando’s future expansion plans in Asia’s third largest economy. Continue reading »
Heineken to build Ethiopia’s biggest brewery
At between 4-5 litres a year, Ethiopia’s beer per capita consumption is one of the lowest in the region. Yet its market has doubled over the last five years thanks to its growing population, urbanisation and rising incomes. All this is proving to be an irresistible draw for global brewers – with Heineken the latest to announce plans to build a new $156m brewery in the country. Continue reading »
Russia & Georgia: wine tasting
She seems to like it
Sanitary inspectors in Russia look set to lift a ban on Georgian wine and mineral water imports imposed in 2006 for reasons that probably had more to do with politics than hygiene.
The end of the embargo would mark a small step towards the restoration of ties between the two countries that fought a war in 2008 over Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Continue reading »
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