Morrisons restructuring leads the headlines

During the week it emerged that 70% of Morrisons' board had now left the retailer​ since its new boss David Potts began work just over a month ago.

Yesterday (April 16), the retailer revealed plans to axe 720 roles​ at its Bradford head office, while hiring 5,000 new shopfloor staff in a bid to boost customer service.

‘Falling asleep at the wheel’​

There was more good news for supermarkets as leading City analyst Shore Capital predicted three of Britain’s big four supermarkets – Tesco, Asda and Morrisons – were striking back against hard discounters Aldi and Lidl, after formerly “falling asleep at the wheel”​.

Evidence for the recovery came in the shape of improving volumes and gross margins, capital spending cut and better management strategies​, said Shore Capital. But Sainsbury still gave the analyst cause for concern.

Also in the good news list was Welsh dairy co-op South Caernarfon Creameries, which invested £6M in a new cheese plant in Gwynedd creating 10 jobs and safeguarding 90 others​.

‘10 Ones to Watch’​

There was positive news for Food Manufacture’s publisher – William Reed Business Media – as it featured on a list of ‘10 Ones to Watch’​ high-performing private firms, associated with the Profit Track 100 list published by The Sunday Times​.

FoodManufacture.co.uk also achieved near record performance with 110,850 independently-audited unique monthly visitors to our website in March.

But there was bad news for food recalls this week. Four products were recalled on food safety fears​: Galaxy Cookie Crumble chocolate bars, recalled on fears of contamination with white plastic, the Co-operative Loved by us Tandoori Chicken slices were recalled due to unlabelled milk and Lidl's Deluxe Mature Cheddar with Pickled Onions and Chives on fears of undeclared sulphites.

On Friday (April 17) Amko Foods recalled all packs of its Pork Dripping with Jelly because it had not carried out appropriate shelf-life analysis. The ‘best before’ dates on the product may not be correct, it said.

In addition, the products were not labelled with the appropriate storage instructions to show that it should be chilled. 

Also making the headlines this week were the launches of election manifestos from the Conservatives​, Labour​ and Liberal Democrat​ parties, plus business leaders’ response to them.