Mysupermarket.co.uk has compared the cost of a basket of essential food items such as bread and milk and found that the price is 15% higher than this time last year. Significant increases were on bread which is up 20% and eggs which has seen a rise of over 50%. (more…)

Cadbury Schweppes has reported strong sales growth of 7% for the first quarter of the year. This despite falling market share in the UK following a decision not to aggresively price goods for the Easter market. Easter being early this year also played its part. (more…)

Good on Tate & Lyle for adopting the Fairtrade label on all its retail sugar in the UK. The move will see the Fairtrade sugar sector rise to over £80m by the end of 2009. The executive director of Fairtrade, Harriet Lamb, sees the move as tremendous and reports that this is the largest ever switch to Fairtrade by a UK company.

Tate & Lyle will also pay a premium, estimated at £2m, to the sugar-growers in order to fund projects in local schools and health clinics. Whilst no doubt increasing costs to Tate & Lyle in the short term, the increasing push to encourage Fairtrade and organic is sure to benefit the company in the long term.