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US sues tobacco firms for $289bn
EPO clears Crown SuperEnd patent
Risk management service launched
P&G gets Wella for 3.2bn euros
Tate & Lyle and Igene in the pink
US/UK ally on organic dairy products
O-I rocks with Interbrew
Forget Deep Blue; here’s Ice Blue
UK credits IoP training status
People
Javier Ferran is to be the next
president and CEO of Bacardi Ltd.
Dr Craig Henry joins the US
National Food Producers Association as vice president of food safety
programmes.
Courts
US sues
tobacco firms for $289bn
The US Justice Department wants
cigarette makers to forfeit $289 billion in profits it says were derived
from 50 years of fraudulent and dangerous marketing.
Courts
EPO
clears Crown SuperEnd patent
The European Patent Office has
upheld US-based Crown Cork & Seal's European patent (EP 0 828 663 B1)
for the so-called SuperEnd beverage can end and related seaming technology
in response to a complaint by a competitor.
The SuperEnd offers a 10 percent
saving on materials over existing beverage can ends. Crown and its
licensees have produced some 12 billion SuperEnds in the past two years.
Crown plans to launch it in Europe
shortly and recently licensed the technology to Australian packaging
manufacturer Amcor for the Australian and New Zealand markets.
Food safety
Risk
management service launched
A new risk management service
offers crisis management, product safety, risk reduction and product
recall advice to food and beverage manufacturers world-wide.
Insurer American International
Group (AIG), product recall consultancy RQA Europe and food safety expert
Reading Scientific Services have combined to help clients limit the number
and impact of product contamination events.
M&A
P&G
gets Wella for 3.2bn euros
Consumer products company Procter
& Gamble has persuaded the
Ströher family to sell its 51
percent share in 123-year-old German hair products company Wella. P&G
will pay €3.2 billion ($3.4 billion) in cash and take over debts of
€1.1 billion.
The deal values Wella at €92.25
a share, 90 percent more than when takeover rumours began last October.
The deal gives P&G a more
stable European base and nearly a quarter of the $10 billion market for
professional hair-
care products. It also makes
P&G better able to compete with market leader L'Oréal Group of Paris.
Expect changes in the Wella board,
which fought the sale. "From a business perspective, the announced
transaction is not a necessary step," the Wella board said, adding it
"respects the decision of the family” as being “beyond the
board's sphere of influence".
The purchase is P&G's largest
ever and its second in hair-care. It bought Clairol for $4.95 billion in
late 2001, and chief executive Alan Lafley said then he was looking for
more additions to P&G’s s health and beauty care unit.
New products
Tate
& Lyle and Igene in the pink
Tate & Lyle and Igene
Biotechnology are setting up a joint venture to produce AstaXin, a
fermented natural source of the pigment astaxanthin widely used to put the
pink into salmon and other farmed fish.
AstaXin has been approved as a
feed ingredient in Chile, Canada, the United States, and Japan, with a
European OK awaited.
Tate & Lyle will spend £15m
($25m) to convert part of its Selby citric acid facility to produce
1,500t/y of AstaXin. Commercial production is expected to start in 2004.
Business
US/UK ally on
organic dairy products
US-based organic dairy company
Organic Holding has asked Yoplait Dairy Crest develop new organic yoghurt
products under its Rachel's Organic brand for the UK market.
Yoplait Dairy Crest, a joint
venture between Yoplait SAS France and Dairy Crest, is the UK's
second-largest chilled yoghurt and desserts manufacturer.
In December 2001, Horizon Organic
signed Dairy Crest to manufacture and distribute the company's milk
products in the UK.
Deals
O-I rocks
with Interbrew
US glassmaker Owens-Illinois is to
supply all glass bottles to Interbrew-owned brewers Labatt and Latrobe.
The deal covers Labatt's nine breweries in North America, including the
Latrobe Brewing Company, which produces the Rolling Rock brands.
O-I has been supplying Labatt's
eight Canadian breweries for eight years, and several other Interbrew
operations including sites in the UK and Eastern Europe.
O-I reopened its Brockway, Pa
bottle plant in April 2002 after an 18-month shutdown. It will add 40 jobs
and new decorating machines to produce Rolling Rock's unique bottle with
its "applied ceramic labelling”. The distinctive green
"painted-label" bottle is one of Rolling Rock's most familiar
brand images.
Bottle sizes include 22, 12 and
7oz (650, 354 and 207ml) non-returnables and 12 and 7oz returnables.
Production of the Rolling Rock
bottles at Brockway began on
17 February and the first filling
at Latrobe Brewing was a week later.
Research
Forget
Deep Blue; here’s Ice Blue
IBM is following up its
chess-playing supercomputer Deep Blue with a new one to help researchers
understand the complex environmental relationships of the Arctic
environment, in particular the health and variability of populations of
salmon and whitefish.
Scientists at the Arctic Region
Supercompu- ting Centre (ARSC) will use the "Iceberg"
supercomputer to study the growth and demise of salmon and whitefish in
the Gulf of Alaska over the last 30 years, a period in which fish
populations and climate variance have changed a lot.
"This five teraflop
technology will allow us to perform simulations that we hope will allow us
to make more informed decisions about our aquatic environment," says
ARSC director Frank Williams.
For the first time
three-dimensional models will combine the currents and depths of the ocean
with biological information of its aquatic life. Researchers believe it
will help them understand shifting fish populations as well as to predict
algal blooms.
*Salmon and whitefish from the
Gulf of Alaska account more than half of all seafood consumed in the US,
including 95 percent of all salmon.
The supercomputer will also be
used for research in many other fields including bioinformatics, global
climate change, ocean circulation, galactic formation, and Arctic
engineering.
Training
UK
credits IoP training status
The UK Institute of Packaging has
received QCA (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority) status from the
British government as a full educational qualifications awarding body.
The new QCA status means the IOP
can promote its qualifications, such as the Diploma in Packaging
Technology and new Certificate in Packaging, through educational centres
and study locations worldwide. |
