Cargill today released its 2012 Corporate Responsibility Report. Entitled Our Responsibility in a Changing World, it reports on the four pillars of the company’s approach to corporate responsibility: conducting business with integrity; working to feed the world; operating responsible supply chains; and enriching our communities.
General Mills, Minneapolis, Minnesota, US, remains overly reliant on the North American market. Its international breakfast cereals presence falls to Lausanne, Switzerland-based Cereal Partners Worldwide, a joint venture with Nestlé, Vevey, Switzerland. The company indicated, however, that emerging markets are its new focus for growth with Brazil one of the most likely to benefit from its investment.
Even as major food processing companies worldwide place an ever-increasing emphasis on achieving a global reach, the trend toward internationalization has mostly eluded the wholesale baking industry. Among major US baking companies, few have any presence beyond the nation’s borders. The principal exception is Grupo Bimbo SAB de CV, Mexico’s largest baking company and now the largest baker in the US.
Integrating robots into bakeries’ packaging areas can greatly reduce labor requirements for placing unwrapped baked foods into infeed conveyors or to put primary-packaged products into carton or secondary packaging. Robots are tireless workers, operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week without fail.
Africa is hot in the packaged food market. The continent’s changing demographic profile, increasing urbanization and concurrent increase in discretionary spending all point to increased growth. Food corporations have consequently become more active in key countries of interest as the race to secure positions in new emerging markets intensifies.
Milling & Baking News’ exclusive interview of Daniel Servitje, CEO of Grupo Bimbo, SAB de CV, was preceded by a half-day tour of Bimbo’s baking complex at Azcapotzalco in the northwest part of Mexico City. Dating to 1972, the facility represented a “quantum leap” forward by the company when it opened, said Rosalio Rodriguez, Grupo Bimbo chief of operations.
Barry Callebaut has paid €2.4 million in premiums for Rainforest Alliance certified cocoa. This payment will benefit 45 cocoa cooperatives and more than 12,000 farmers in Côte d’Ivoire. Farmers receive half of the premium while the other half is retained by the cooperative and used to provide services to its farmer members or for community facilities. The farmers and cooperatives received the premium payments for the delivery of more than 15,000 metric tonnes of certified cocoa during the 2011/12 cocoa season.
This summer’s lingering drought—the worst in at least 50 years, with over 1,000 counties in 26 states currently qualifying for disaster relief—will inevitably cause a spike in food prices. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, corn is now 22% more expensive than at the beginning of the year, and soybeans are up 32% (see in “For Food, It’s the Bad and the Ugly”).
Palmer and Harvey’s Sweetdirect has sold its 15 millionth Chupa Chups lollipop.
Since starting to stock this iconic brand three years ago they have been at the top of the sales bestsellers list, with 20,000 a day flying out off the vans.
Sweetdirect is the biggest distributor of single Chupa Chups lollies to the UK independent sector. These numbers are only set to rise with 2,000 new distribution points having been added to the Sweetdirect network this June.
The University of Navarre Hospital is set to become the first in Navarre to provide treatment enabling the elimination of allergic reactions to the basic foods of milk and eggs. In just under two months, in the case of eggs, and between three and four, in the case of milk, patients will be able to consume a glass of milk (200 ml) or one egg every day, thanks to a new treatment of gradual desensitisation. “The quality of life for these patients is substantially enhanced”, confirms Doctor María José Goikoetxea, specialist in the Department of Allergology and Immunology at the University of Navarre Hospital.
