MITCHELL NEEMS MAY 28, 2014 BUSINESS SPECTATOR INCOMING Coles managing director John Durkan has given the first indications of his vision for the retail giant, including a “customer-led” turnaround of the underperforming liquor division and a push for further growth in fresh food sales. Speaking at a Wesfarmers strategy briefing, Mr Durkan, currently Coles’ chief operating officer and due to replace Coles managing director Ian McLeod from July 1, said he would also move to simplify and improve Coles’ supply chain. Mr McLeod is moving to a senior role within the wider Wesfarmers Group. Mr Durkan said Coles’ share of fresh food still lagged its dry groceries and that he would focus on narrowing the gap on quality, range and service inconsistencies. He also noted increasing cost pressures on the business and flagged a focus on simplifying operations. Addressing the briefing before Mr Durkan, Wesfarmers chief executive Richard Goyder said…

Andrew Bain May 28, 2014 The Age In Colombia, coffee is a precious resource. An industry that employs half a million people, it accounts for approximately 16 per cent of the country’s GDP. The country’s oldest and most highly regarded coffee region has been World Heritage listed by Unesco, and all of its beans are hand picked, with Colombia’s steep and rugged terrain resisting mechanisation. Across the world, Colombian coffee is regarded as among the smoothest and finest on the market. Almost universally, the coffee you’re served in Colombia is bland, overly bitter or overpowered by milk. If you come to the world’s fourth-largest coffee producer for the java, you invariably leave disappointed, unless you travel to Salento. The oldest town in the World Heritage-listed ‘coffee triangle’, Salento began inauspiciously in the 1840s as a gaol, isolated in jungle, growing into a town as prisoners’ families moved to be near…

JANE HARPER MAY 28, 2014 HERALD SUN THE new head of Coles has vowed to keep loading the cannons in the supermarket price war, claiming the chain will push hard to cut prices further in the next five years. Unveiling his growth blueprint on Wednesday, John Durkan also threw down the gauntlet to rival Woolworths over its longstanding “fresh food people” strategy, saying Coles would ramp up its own fresh offerings. And he declared he would overhaul the group’s liquor businesses — Liquorland, First Choice and Vintage Cellars — cutting the number of products on offer and removing clutter in the stores. Speaking at a Wesfarmers’ strategy briefing on Wednesday, Mr Durkan gave the first insights into his plan for the next phase of Coles’ turnaround. The Coles chief operating officer, who will replace Ian McLeod as managing director on July 1, said there would be no let-up in the…

Peter Taylor 29 May 2014 The Guardian The industry now claims to be more socially responsible, yet it is suing countries around the world that try to introduce plain packaging Thirty years ago, after making a series of controversial documentaries on smoking, including Dying for a Fag (1975) and A Dying Industry (1980), I wrote Smoke Ring: the Politics of Tobacco, outlining an industry denying the medical evidence linking cigarettes to deadly diseases with a smokescreen of deception and lies. For many years, the tobacco industry’s response to questions on health was that it was not qualified to comment. That was British American Tobacco’s line when I interviewed one of its executives, Alan Long, in Brazil in 1980. “I am not a medical man and therefore cannot offer a medical opinion,” he told me. “I am, of course, aware that there is a very substantial controversy in this area.” On…

RICHARD GLUYAS MAY 29, 2014 THE AUSTRALIAN IN February 2012, Australian Egg Corporation managing director James Kellaway called together the nation’s top 25 producers at the Mercure Hotel at Sydney Airport to discuss an “oversupply crisis”. Mr Kellaway didn’t need to tell his members they had a problem — prices had fallen through the floor, affecting industry ­returns. However, the short-term ­solutions proposed by the AEC chief would create a crisis of a different kind, as yesterday’s Federal Court allegations of cartel conduct demonstrated. According to a 28-page statement of claim lodged by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, one of Mr Kellaway’s PowerPoint slides advised producers to “dispose of eggs by either donating eggs to one or many charity groups or dumping/burying eggs”. “Reduce the number of laying hens by culling birds (there is currently capacity with the major processors). Use of an independent auditor?” the slide continued. “Increase…

MATT CHAMBERS MAY 28, 2014 THE AUSTRALIAN PUMA Energy, an aggressive new entrant into the fuel sector, says it expects more closures in Australia’s rapidly shrinking oil refinery sector, turning the ­nation into Asia’s biggest fuel import market and underpinning up to $250 million of planned infrastructure spending. Puma chief executive Pierre Elardari said recent closure announcements at three east coast refineries in Sydney and Brisbane, and the expectation of more to come, were creating big opportunities for the Swiss company and its compatriot and major shareholder, the trading giant Trafigura. “We import our (refined fuel) products, so we are quite skilled in building logistics and connecting with the international markets,” Mr Elardari told The Australian yesterday at the opening of a $70m fuel import terminal at Mackay. The terminal and storage tanks have been built to service the diesel needs of the Bowen Basin coking coal industry. “That is…