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| Editor’s Stuff: Rainbow-Foodcorp – a new food conglomerate in the making! |
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Last newsletter, the headlines trumpeted that Burger King was to début in South Africa, and now another equally interesting corporate development has transpired: Rainbow Chicken’s purchase of a majority stake in unlisted Foodcorp.
 In a move which came as a surprise to the financial markets, Rainbow’s CE, Miles Dally (left), said it would pay about R1-billion to buy a 64.2 percent stake in Foodcorp, a move that will add popular brands to its basket and greater exposure to the consumer goods sector.
 Now we are four!
This newsletter marks FOODStuff SA’s fourth birthday! A wonderful journey, beginning in November 2008, continues and viewership growth remains very encouraging.
On its second anniversary, I noted that FOODStuff SA was peaking at 4 000 unique visitors every month, making over 8 000 visits and turning over 85 000 pages. Today, those monthly figures are at over 10 500 unique visitors, more than 23 000 visits and well over 200 000 pages turned.
When I started out, my newsletter subscriber database comprised around 1 000 names; today I have over 3 000 recipients.
It’s equally pleasing that, on a Google search for a score of food industry-related terms, FOODStuff SA will pop up at the top, or near top, of the search results, one of the pinnacle achievements for web publishing.
Big thanks to you, dear reader, and my very valued advertisers who continue to make it all possible.
Enjoy this week’s newsletter!
Jobs of the Week! Quality Assurance Supervisor and Food Auditors wanted!
FOODStuff SA is a hub for food-bev industry recruitment: look for a job or advertise your company’s positions!
Click here!
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| Local News and Developments |
Woolworths aims to grow its market share in food and clothing aggressively. Just how does it plan to scale new heights?
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SAI Global has announce the acquisition of QPRO International, a leading provider of food safety auditing, microbiological testing and related services in Southern Africa. SAI Global is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.
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Riebeek West, in the heart of the Western Cape’s picturesque Swartland, is home to a new food enterprise, Group 35 Foods, that has taken the step from agri-business into FMCG food manufacture.
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A group of Dutch researchers has demonstrated, for the first time, that rooibos tea has strong antiviral activity against rotaviruses that cause serious infections, often with fatal consequences.
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Cape Town’s The Free Range Chicken Co is changing the way eggs are packaged with the release of its own line of shell eggs, packaged in clear recycled PET plastic containers.
While we reported on Ready Egg’s launch in late August, FOODStuff SA recently went out to discover more about this breakthrough FMCG product for South Africa.
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The second stevia-based sweetener has been launched in SA, with Huletts débuting EquiSweet sweetener with Stevia Plant Extract.
ERISTOFF Vodka, one of the fastest-growing vodka brands in the world, has been launched in South Africa. ERISTOFF forms part of the global Bacardi brand portfolio.
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A stream of consumer emails have come to FOODStuff SA asking this very question. People had bought the product, tried it and loved it, and now can’t find it anywhere. We put the issue to Kellogg SA, and this is what they had to say…
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Burger King, the world’s second-largest fast-food chain, is coming to SA, starting in Cape Town.
GPI’s bite of Burger King The local launch of Burger King has been a headline-grabbing event. But shareholders in empowerment group Grand Parade Investments (GPI), which will partner and finance Burger King’s entry into the vibrant SA fast food segment, might be wondering what longer-term returns could be served up to them.
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International News & Developments
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Home carbonation beverage system maker, SodaStream International, is taking on “Big Soda” and looking to steal market share from the soft drink giants with the launch of its first global TV campaign and some posturing from its CEO (see Food Bites below).
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Global Industry Analysts (GIA) has released a global report on the Food Additives markets that, globally, are projected to reach $37.7 billion by 2018, driven primarily by the increased focus on health and nutrition; the emergence of value-added products; the need for convenience; and the commercialisation of new products, among others.
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Hostess, the company that since the 1930s has provided America, and the world, with snacks that are nearly indestructible, looks like it is definitely going out of business. Its famous brands, Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Sno Balls, Ho Ho’s, CupCakes, Wonder Bread and a host of others, will live on, no doubt, with new owners.
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Mondelez to invest $400 million in cocoa producers Mondelez International said it will spend $400 million over the next 10 years on cocoa producers, as it focuses on securing supplies of the main raw ingredient in chocolate. The investment includes $100 million in Ivory Coast, supplier of more than one-third of the world’s cocoa.
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Africa has the fastest growing middle class in the world The numbers are compelling: Africa’s population explosion has seen its middle class population triple over the last three decades, to a whopping 313m people. And it’s predicted to swell from 34.3% to 42% of the continent’s population by 2060.
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Brazil’s growing agrifood clout Starting at zero in 2010, Brazilian corn exports to the US are on pace to exceed $10m this year and are bound to rise …. and Brazil is expected next year to dethrone the US as the world’s largest producer of soybeans.
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Food Trends and Marketing
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Fast, fresh, flavourful… If we are what we eat, then American and Westerners in general are more complex than ever, and marketers are quickly adapting to the new demands of a rapidly changing food world.
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Eating alone has become as common as eating together, according to new research by The Hartman Group, a leading US market researcher. Its data reveals that close to half – 46 percent – of all adult eating occasions are now solitary.
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Although health is normally not a key driver in confectionery purchasing and consumption, the rising level of interest in naturalness as a whole has been making a growing impression in the confectionery sector and driving the move to “clean labeling” by the industry.
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Craig Lodge, MD of Integer South Africa, shares his views on ways in which packaging should work alongside other forms of brand communication.
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AeroShot Pure Energy, the new aerosol product provides consumers with a shot of caffeine, vitamins, and natural flavours from a portable, single-use dispensing device, has been commercialised this year. This article looks at Aeroshot and its packaging in detail.
Fruits, vegetables and wheat bread are all sources of fibre. Now, so is Pepsi-Cola in Japan – PepsiCo has launched a version of its namesake soda with a fat-blocking fibre, dextrin, in Japan.
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Food Science, Technology and Ingredients Stuff
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Potch’s North-West University is home to world-class extrusion technology – a feat that was recently hailed at camput celebrations. What initially started in 1994 as a dream of Prof LJ Grobler, dean of the Faculty of Engineering, over time has evolved into technology that can compete with the global best.
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A breakthrough whey protein developed by Arla Foods Ingredients will, it claims, for the first time enable companies to produce very high protein sports drinks that taste good.
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UK-based consumer goods giant, Reckitt Benckiser, has clinched an £882-million (€1.09bn) deal, and outbid German pharma firm, Bayer, for the US’s second-biggest dietary supplements firm, Schiff Nutrition International, giving it a foothold in the £18-billion vitamins and nutrition pills market.
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Many technologies have been developed to promote the shelf life of fruit and vegetables in the home – and now there’s a new one. Introducing FreshPaper, claimed to keep such foods fresh two to four times longer than normal – and it does so using spices.
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A food scientist at Indiana’s Purdue University has created a “radiant fryer” that results in fried food with all the flavour, but up to half the fat and fewer calories than food cooked using conventional methods.
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Packaging Stuff
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South Africa is to follow the global trend of replacing tin-plated steel beverage cans with aluminium-bodied cans, with the first locally produced all-aluminium cans set to hit the market mid-2013.
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Changing lifestyles popularises flexible packaging New analysis from Frost & Sullivan says changing lifestyles among consumers and the consequent dependence on processed, packed and pre-cooked food is increasing the sales of flexible packaging. Rigid packaging is visibly giving way to flexible packaging.
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As everyone in the food industry knows, packaging is not necessarily evil, but an absolute necessity. A new book, “Why Shrink-wrap a Cucumber? The Complete Guide to Environmental Packaging”, unpacks various myths to show how, done well, packaging can please the planet as much as it can producers, retailers and consumers.
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Weird, Whacky and Wonderful Stuff
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Best Inventions of the Year 2012 Time magazine’s annual list includes two food industry-related innovations: an inexpensive and user-friendly robot, dubbed Baxter, that’s built for light repetitive tasks like packing and sorting; and LiquiGlide, the extraordinary microscopic slippery coating that can be applied to almost any material — glass, ceramic, metal or plastic.
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Last newsletter’s top headline: With handSteady, you can have your cup and drink from it, too Briton Chris Peacock may not have reinvented the wheel, but he’s definitely reinvented the cup. Introducing handSteady, an ergonomic cup to help people with health conditions (such as tremor, joint pain and Parkinson’s disease) to have their drinks without undergoing a nerve-wracking challenge. It’s simply brilliant!
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Food bites…2012: On a mission to fizz up the CSD global duopoly
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 “Coca-Cola and PepsiCo will have to face the reality that their business model cannot be preserved forever. The world is changing and we’re going to call it out.
“If the beverage industry had to create itself now from scratch, it wouldn’t do it the way it is. You don’t need factories, trucks, bottles and cans. Transportation for carbonated drinks in the world utilises 100 million barrels of oil every year. That is 20 times the BP disaster that hit the Gulf of Mexico.
“I think it is criminal that the industry, led by two big companies, will do anything to protect their antiquated business model. They are generating 35 million bottles and cans every single day in the UK alone. Worldwide it is one billion bottles and cans, most of which just go to trash, landfill, the oceans or parks. It’s insane.”
Daniel Birnbaum, CEO of SodaStream
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