REBECCA URBAN MARCH 21, 2014 THE AUSTRALIAN AUSTRALIA’S largest dairy processor, Murray Goulburn, is believed to be mulling a $400 million purchase of the Peters Ice Cream business as it forges ahead with its ambitious plan to consolidate the local dairy industry. Fresh from booking a $51m profit following the Warrnambool Cheese & Butter takeover battle, the Melbourne-based co-operative has recently hosted a presentation by management of the ice cream company, which is currently being shopped around by its private equity owner, Pacific Equity Partners. Speculation has been mounting in recent days that Murray Goulburn, which looked into a potential purchase of the business two years ago before it was snapped up by PEP, has made an indicative offer in the range of $400m, subject to a request to conduct further due diligence. PEP purchased the company behind the iconic Drumstick and Icy Pole frozen treats from Nestle for about…

Kate Jones March 19, 2014 Do discount chains mean local pharmacies are dead? Is the old fashioned apothecary a thing of the past? It’s a David versus Goliath scenario. Small independent pharmacies up against the might of discount chemist chains. Will it be a battle to the death? Or will there be enough market space for both to share? Customers come to their local pharmacist because they are trusted and have a good knowledge of medicine. There are 5250 community pharmacies in Australia and 12 per cent of those are completely independent, according to research firm IBISWorld. But these independents are expected to gradually be “forced out of the industry”, IBISWorld researcher Arna Richardson says in her January 2014 report Pharmacies in Australia. Richardson points to an increasingly competitive industry due to the introduction of low-cost warehouse-style pharmacies coupled with proposed changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme by the federal…

Brad Edmondson 19 March 2014 theguardian.com As Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, turns 63, Brad Edmondson explains why the company is proof that profits and purpose can co-exist The story behind Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream and its 35-year struggle to achieve “linked prosperity” started with a simple but radical idea that everyone and everything the company touched should benefit from its profits. The sale of the ice cream makers to Unilever in 2000 therefore was a surprise twist to those who knew the two founders, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. I recently published a book on just this. I wrote the story without the input of Cohen or Greenfield as they declined to be interviewed, which bothered me, at first. I had written other stories featuring charismatic founders I did not interview, but those people were always dead. Cohen and Greenfield are still friends and doing just…

Sarah Butler and Sean Farrell 19 March 2014 The Guardian Sainsbury’s is last of UK’s big four grocers to see sales go into reverse as shoppers search for bargains at discounters Over the last three months sales in Sainsbury’s stores open for more than a year tumbled by just over 3% – ending a 36-quarter run of growth. Nine years of constantly growing sales have come to an abrupt end at Sainsbury’s in another sign of the huge changes in Britain’s shopping habits. The change in fortunes revealed on Tuesday makes Sainsbury’s the last of the UK’s big four grocers to see sales at established stores go into reverse as a result of shoppers searching for bargains at discounters such as Aldi and Lidl, switching to cheaper own-label goods, moving online – or simply buying less. Over the last three months sales in Sainsbury’s stores open for more than a…

ELIZABETH A. HARRIS MARCH 16, 2014 The New York Times The New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, and others have called for retailers to follow the lead of CVS, which has said it will take tobacco products off its shelves by October. More than two dozen attorneys general sent letters on Sunday to five of the country’s largest retailers, encouraging them to stop selling tobacco products in stores that also have pharmacies, which would follow the example CVS Caremark set with its announcement earlier this year that it would stop selling such products in its drugstores. The letters were sent to Rite Aid, Walgreen, Kroger, Safeway and Walmart, five companies that are among the biggest pharmacy retailers in the country. “There is a contradiction in having these dangerous and devastating tobacco products on the shelves of a retail chain that services health care needs,” the letters said. Stopping the…