Unilever is finally pulling out of Russia, The Mail on Sunday reports. It cites Russian media who say a sale has been agreed with chemicals group Arnest. The consumer giant sparked outrage when it refused to ditch its Russian business in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022. The deal is understood to be worth £300-350m.
Tesco is ‘parking its vans’ on Ocado’s lawn, The Sunday Times reports. It’s set up a new e-commerce venture to help international supermarket chains build their online businesses. The Tesco subsidiary is called Transcend Retail Solutions, and it’s already working with a New Zealand supermarket chain.
Asda is set to be in the spotlight this week with “60,000” Asda workers reportedly set to demonstrate over sex discrimination. Demonstrations will be held at both the TUC Conference in Brighton and in Manchester, where the long-running equal pay trial kicks off this week. The Daily Telegraph says retail has relied on underpaid women for too long.
Meanwhile Asda is planning to launch a ‘big workplace savings scheme’ The Times reports this morning, partnering with Wagestream to offers its 150,000 workers a 4.7% AER savings account.
Canadian convenience store giant Alimentation Couche-Tard is still hoping to buy 7-Eleven despite an initial $39bn offer being rejected, Financial Times reports. The bid was first tabled in mid August.
The unfolding orange juice crisis is also covered by Financial Times. It reports that futures prices are almost three times above those of two years ago as crop disease hits yields.
The £1bn sale of The Ivy by Richard Caring is widely covered. Both the Daily Mail and Sky News report that the deal is close to fruition.
Charlie Bigham is publishing his first cookery book this week. To promote it there’s a profile in the Saturday supplement of The Times. The ‘posh pieman’ memorably insists: “I hate ready meals.” He goes on to explain: “Ready meals are something you put in a microwave, they’re full lof additives and preservatives and they’re not very nice.”
And finally, sales of ‘retro’ crisps are soaring. ’First Labour, then Oasis, now 1990s crisps are back in fashion,’ says The Sunday Times, citing Ocado data. A new generation is discovering the joys of Frazzles, Skips, Discos and NikNaks thanks to social media, with videos of young people trying the flavours for the first time being watched hundreds of thousands of times on TikTok, while some popular cookery channels on Instagram are also encouraging their followers to add Frazzles to their food to add flavour and crunch.
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