Jul 10, 2019 | Katherine Rich Comments
The food and grocery sector (as it should) puts a lot of emphasis on health & safety. Be it on the farm, in the factory, in the distribution centre, on the road, or in the supermarket – involving everything from farm-bike safety and forklifts, to driving skills...
Jun 20, 2019 | Katherine Rich Comments
The global food and grocery industry demonstrated a positive direction and how it’s working in the interests of consumers at Food Industry Asia’s ‘Food for the Future Summit’ conference in Singapore last month. It attracted leaders from across the food and grocery...
May 24, 2019 | Katherine Rich Comments
When I know so much is being done by the dairy industry to be good stewards of the land and to produce high-quality nutritious foods, I get disappointed to read such negativity about our No 1 industry. The idea that dairy farmers are happily collecting their big...
May 9, 2019 | Katherine Rich Comments
Getting food labelling right is critical to any food business. Consumers rely on it and sometimes it’s a matter of life and death. Food safety in New Zealand is assumed, but there are many countries where consumers don’t have the same faith, and for good reason....
Apr 29, 2019 | Katherine Rich Comments
Companies of all shapes and sizes will be waiting with interest on the outcome of a Government consultation on proposals to strengthen the law protecting consumers and business from anti-competitive behaviour. The proposals concern Section 36 of the Commerce Act,...
Apr 24, 2019 | Katherine Rich Comments
In a small country with a population the size of many cities around the world, New Zealand naturally has a small base of quality academic work suitable for publication. Not surprisingly, when it comes to the peer-review process in New Zealand, quite often...
Apr 3, 2019 | Katherine Rich Comments
Now that it’s happened, I doubt too many people disagree with the ban on plastic shopping bags. I think many understand that overuse of plastic is becoming a problem right through the environment, and particularly for marine life and the ramifications down that food...
Mar 19, 2019 | Katherine Rich Comments
I was hoping 2019 would be a year of constructive reports on issues around obesity and wellness so we could make further headway on them. But it was only mid-January when British medical journal The Lancet published a report calling for people to eat a mouthful of...
Feb 19, 2019 | Katherine Rich Comments
I’m picking a very interesting year ahead for the FMCG sector. There’s no doubt from a suppliers’ point of view that profitability will be the main focus, but issues such as labelling, packaging and obesity will continue to loom large, as they have done for quite a...
Nov 27, 2018 | Katherine Rich Comments
The management of supermarkets and consumer goods companies has taken on quite a change in recent times – and there’s more to come. After decades of grocers scurrying around filling boxes with shoppers’ orders, and decades more of them carrying plastic bags to the...
Nov 27, 2018 | Katherine Rich Comments
Workplace Wellness programmes are often thought to be the domain of only large corporates, and beyond the resources of smaller businesses, but this does not need to be the case. When I look around the members of the New Zealand Food & Grocery Council, I often see...
Sep 14, 2018 | Katherine Rich Comments
In the debate around how to tackle the complex issue of obesity, sugar continues to attract the most attention. For the most part, those railing against it believe taxes to be the single best solution. But with the Government saying it prefers to work with the food...
