The American buyer of Chinese-owned Weetabix has moved to calm fears that the buyout comes at the expense of UK jobs and business, according to an article in The Mail on Sunday. Rob Vitale, head of Post, told the paper: “Post has zero production facilities in the UK, and our objective is to grow Weetabix. So while all employers look at productivity and ways to reduce costs we don’t have a situation in which we have duplicate facilities.”
Britain’s households could be spared a further blow from higher inflation because Theresa May’s snap election has pushed up the pound, limiting the chance of more rises in the cost of imports, with economist predicting further rises in the future (The Telegraph). However, The Sunday Times writes that economy’s post‑Brexit glow is beginning to fade, with official figures set to show this week a slowdown in the first quarter as rising prices brought the post-referendum consumer boom to an end.
Whitbread, the leisure giant behind Premier Inn and Costa Coffee, is set to strike a cautious tone on British consumer spending as it reveals its annual results this week (The Sunday Times).
On Saturday The Times featured a story on Reckitt Benckiser’s results. The paper writes that Reckitt insisted that its underlying business remained strong in the face of challenging market conditions, despite reporting its weakest quarterly revenues since 2000.
The Times also featured a small story on the results of British wine producer Chapel Down, which reported sales at twice the anticipated level since launching in America last October.
A market report in The Times notes that Marks & Spencer shares climbed to the highest point since June after a senior City analyst started coverage of the retailer with a bullish outlook for its food division. After the high street bellwether announced it was shuttering six of its stores across the UK, an opinion piece in The Observer by Barbara Ellen says retailers should try to keep a presence on the high street in case consumers forget about them. “It’s not quite the case yet that every time an M&S store shuts a retail fairy dies, but it’s getting close,” she writes.
A likely deal between Walmart and Bonobos, a hybrid digital/brick-and-mortar menswear brand, may be a sign of the future of retail, The Guardian writes.
China’s soaring appetite for avocados, driven by demand from its burgeoning health-conscious middle-class, has made the “butter fruit” the country’s star performer in the imported fruit market (The Financial Times).
Saracens rugby club chairman Nigel Wray has acquired a minority stake in online grocer Farmdrop as part of a £7m fundraising (The Sunday Times). The company, set up in 2012, promises a better deal for producers than the supermarkets and says it supports local food production by sourcing most orders from within 150 miles of customers.
An extended feature in The Observer examines the fallout from the collapse of BHS, writing the high street is still reeling from the body blow a year ago.
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