Scottish Mace wholesaler Aberness has bought a former independent Mace store in Portgordon, near Buckie in Scotland. It now operates 44 company owned stores and distributes to 180 Mace independents. More than 60 UK companies have signed up with Food From Britain to exhibit at international trade show Sial in Paris in October. DEFRA secretary of state Margaret Beckett is due to visit the show, the first time a Cabinet minister has attended. The Lakeside Group, which represents 25 forecourt operators, has joined the ACS. Acquisitions made in 2001 helped cake specialist Inter Link Foods report a turnover up 146% to £46m for the year ended April 30 2002. Pre-tax profit was £2.7m, up from £1.7m. Lottery operator Camelot has started to roll out a new ISDN network system to its retailers to reduce terminal downtime. Currently around 75% of terminal downtime is caused by network failure. Lawyers representing Big Food Group employees are threatening to extend legal action against the company, which has refused to reopen its final salary pension scheme. BFG said it was confident it had "acted properly in a manner consistent with the fundamental economic issues". The Health and Safety Executive has launched new guidance to help small firms tackle violence at work. C-stores are advised to reduce amounts of cash held in store, and encourage local police to make random visits. Carrefour reported a 1.5% decline in first-half sales to E36.97bn but reaffirmed full year sales growth forecasts of 5%, excluding currency effects. Asda will start trialing biodiesel in its logistics fleet at the end of the month using fuel from recovered vegetable oils, environmental manager Ian Bowles has revealed. Sainsbury has pulled the plug on a London based scheme with Homeport to deliver online shopping orders to boxes attached to customer properties. Homeport said it would focus on b2b opportunities instead. Somerfield has been trialing reverse auction technology from PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Barclays b2b to procure own label goods for more than six months, revealed commercial director Kieron Mayes. Savings have ranged from 5%-15%. The online shopping operation of US supermarket Safeway Inc, in which Tesco has a substantial stake, is now running from "several dozen stores" in Portland, Vancouver and Sacramento, said a spokesman. Home shopping supermarket SimplyOrganic says it is on track to turnover £8m this year through milk float deliveries as it steps up its partnership with Express Dairies. {{NEWS }}

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