Safeway has been shortlisted for the latest UK sustainability reporting award.
The winner of the award, which is given to the company judged to have produced the best combined social and environmental report in 2002, will be announced on 20 March by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.
The supermarket chain, currently in the middle of a takeover battle, is the only retailer on the 14-strong list, which includes British Airways, BT, Carillion, Lattice, LE Group, Shell, United Utilities, and Vauxhall Motors.
Sainsbury's has announced that it will be launching a range of fairly traded organic fruits. The supermarket aims to be the first major superstore in the UK to stock fruits carrying both the Soil Association and the Fairtrade logo.
In developing countries Fair Trade ensures that basic human rights are respected. It provides resources to improve basic social facilities such as health and education and is the only independent consumer label which ensures that farmers and workers in the developing world get a better deal.
28 Jan 2003: ASDA claims to have taken over 1,000 tonnes of salt out of its own-label food and drink products in the past 4 years.
The company has pledged to reduce fat, salt and sugar by a further 10 per cent by the end of 2004. The introduction of the this pledge involved briefing over 600 suppliers and reviewing over 7,000 products in a move to make shoppers' baskets healthier, with no compromise to price, quality or shelf life.
The Hague, 6-7 Feb 2003: Food manufacturing and retailing in many OECD countries is becoming increasingly concentrated among a few big firms. How this trend effects producers, smaller retailers and the consumer - and how governments should respond - will be among the issues explored in Changing Dimensions of the Food Economy: Exploring the Policy Issues, an OECD conference in The Hague, Netherlands on 6-7 February, 2003.
Against a background of rising consumer demand for variety, safety and quality in food, the conference will cover three broad topics:
The changing balance of power along the food supply chain,
Food lifestyles and challenges for the food industry,
Transparency and responsibility in the food economy.
The prospective rival bids for the Safeway supermarket group are likely to stand or fall on an analysis of each companies' impact on local competition, rather than a blanket assessment of the national market shares of each chain, according to an analysis carried out by Experian.
