Industry News

HIM! www.himaustralia.com.au Beverages remain an incredibly important category in the convenience channel. The category’s penetration continues to increase and has grown from 45% to 52% in the last 2 years alone. The beverage shopper is an important shopper for retailers and also for other categories in store. As a shopper with a larger basket (2.5 items v’s CTP average of 2.2) and clearly defined shopping missions and paths in store the beverage category has the ability to drive shopper behaviour in the channel. Let’s have quick look at some key sub-categories and key facts. Energy Drinks: The category had the highest penetration within the category at 21%. There is a sales peak between 9 AM- 10 AM. 18-34 Singles make up 38% of the shopper base followed by Busy Providers at 25% Cola: Busy Providers make up 33% of shoppers Nearly 50% of the busy providers who bought cola also…

Toppy Chanthavong June 26, 2012 The Age You could soon get 10c a pop for every aluminium can and plastic or glass bottle you recycle – if state and national environmental groups get their way. A national container deposits campaign rallied outside Parliament House yesterday to drum up support for a 10c refund to be introduced nationwide for empty bottles returned for recycling. The Boomerang Alliance, an environmental organisation that organised the rally, said about 13 billion recyclable bottles are used in Australia each year – and only five billion are actually recycled, with the remaining eight billion going to litter or landfill. The organisation’s national convenor, Jeff Angel, said the aim of the campaign was to help reduce Australia’s waste. ”[Our goal is] a national container deposit system which will massively reduce the eight billion landfilled or littered containers every year,” he said. Clean Up Australia’s executive chairman Ian…

Rebecca Smithers June 26, 2012 The Age Supersize … a view of the newly constructed McDonald’s restaurant at the Olympic Park in east London. Would you like to supersize that? In a case of taking fast food to the extreme McDonald’s has embraced the pop-up restaurant trend for the 2012 Olympics by building a fast food restaurant of world record breaking size in Stratford, east London, that will last for six weeks. About 300m from the Olympic Stadium, it will displace Pushkin Square in Moscow as the world’s busiest and is expected to serve an estimated 50,000 Big Mac burgers and 180,000 portions of fries – feeding 1200 customers an hour at its busiest – from the beginning of the Olympics to the closing of the Paralympics. Once the Games are concluded the two-storey chalet-style building in the Olympic Park will be dismantled and 75 per cent of it re-used…

June 26, 2012 The Age The number of online orders to Australian businesses increased by almost a third during the 2010-11 financial year. The Australian Bureau of Statistics research released on Tuesday showed that local businesses received online orders worth $189 billion in the 12 months to June 30, 2011, an increase of $46 billion, or 32 per cent, on the previous corresponding period. However, the data also showed that only 28 per cent of business said they had received orders via the internet, a mere 13 per cent increase on the previous year. In contrast, more than half of businesses in Australia, 51 per cent, reported placing orders for goods and services on the internet in last financial year, up nine per cent in the previous year, ABS data showed. In another troubling sign, just below 40 per cent of business reported ‘‘some form of innovative activity’’ in 2010-11,…

CSNews 27 June 2012 NEW YORK — The New York Association of Convenience Stores (NYACS) is banding together with seven tobacco companies to try to overturn a ban on the display of tobacco products in the village of Haverstraw, N.Y. NYACS, Lorillard Tobacco Co., Philip Morris USA Inc., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co., American Snuff Co. LLC, U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Brands Inc., and John Middleton Co. filed a lawsuit yesterday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York. The local law, which passed in April and would go into effect in October, bans the display of all tobacco products. Retailers would provide customers with a printed tobacco menu. NYACS and the tobacco companies described the ban as “a straightforward assault on the content of cigarette advertising and promotion” that violates their First Amendment right to free speech and asked the court to declare…

June 28, 2012 The Age Grocery wholesaler Metcash said it would raise $325 million with the funds to be used to expand in automotive parts and to purchase the rest of hardware group Mitre 10. The company also revealed a full-year profit of $90 million, less than the $135.9 million expected by analysts according to Bloomberg. The annual result was also down 63 per cent on a year earlier, with the company blaming the cost of restructuring its operations and the acquisition of Franklins for the drop. Metcash shares are in a trading halt and last changed hands at $3.74. The company said the price of the new shares would hinge on demand. The Australian Financial Review earlier reported the price would be in the range of $3.46-$3.56, implying a discount of as much as 7.5 per cent on its last price. Metcash will pay a final dividend of 16.5…