Marks and Spencer has extended its home delivery facility to 28 stores in central London. Customers buying over £50 of food can have it delivered free with a £4 charge for smaller baskets. Sainsbury has opened its third railway station Local c-store at London's Fenchurch Street station. The 3,000 sq ft store is geared towards commuters doing a quick shop on the way home. Tesco has cut prices on books by up to a third, offering deals such as three chart-listed titles for £10. It is refusing to stock titles from publishers who set their prices too high, a spokesman said. The Milk Link purchase of UHT processing assets from Express Dairies has now completed, and a new joint venture company formed. The deal makes Milk Link the UK's fourth largest integrated dairy business. The Forum of Private Business estimates a company employing 10 people will have to pay a further £2,361 in National Insurance contributions from April 2003 when a 1% increase in employers' contributions comes into effect. Sainsbury has opened Little Blue Parrot Café eating areas for children at its two Discovery Club instore creche and learning centres in Essex. The Advertising Standards Authority has rapped Tesco for issuing a Price News leaflet implying it sold goods at lower prices than any other supemarket. The ASA said the mutiple provided insufficient evidence for the claim. Tesco is introducing square packaging on prepared fruit from supplier Paradise Foods to make it easier to stack instore and in customers' fridges from this week. The Heart of England Co-operative Society has committed a six-figure sum to increasing security in its 35 food stores. Scotmid Co-op is one of 10 Edinburgh based organisations trialling a Ford TH!NK city environmentally friendly electric car. Organic and healthy options supplier Kallo Foods has become part of Tree of Life Europe, a Koninklijke Wessanen company. Satellite and cable channel UK Food TV reached record viewing figures for its Jamie Oliver's Naked Chef weekend, attracting 700,000 viewers. Logistics firm TDG has posted first half sales figures up 10% from £251m in the first half of 2001 to £277m in the same period this year. However, pretax profit fell by 15% from £9.4m to £8.5m. The Home Grown Cereals Authority is offering grants of up to £50,000 for business initiatives in its latest round of Enterprise Awards. German company Varta has signed a deal to combine its global consumer battery business with US firm Rayovac. The 1262m transaction is expected to be completed in the autumn. {{NEWS }}

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