During the CIES/GFSI Food Safety Conference in Amsterdam, the International Food Standard (IFS) and Safe Quality Food (SQF) certification programmes have announced their future collaboration.

The population of the world is growing older. At the same time, the desire is growing to remain active and healthy even in old age. The beverage and food industries have responded to this increasing health trend with new product developments, and according to Andreas Steinle, CEO of the Future Institute at Kelkheim near Wiesbaden, they are making process profiling themselves as ‘health providers’.

A deal by Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) to close its Reading brewery and move production to Coors’ brewery in Burton, will force Heineken to share a bed with Molson Coors in the UK in the future.

SABMiller, the brewer tipped as a possible white-knight bidder for Scottish & Newcastle (S&N), said yesterday that it had looked at its rival but had decided against taking any further action.

Fears are growing for the future of Scottish & Newcastle’s Edinburgh headquarters, following the agreement of a GBP 7.8 billion takeover.

Heavens know how many fingernails were broken in an effort to open a bottle of Grolsch. But Royal Grolsch is determined to keep its 111 year tradition.

It was a mixed year for Royal Grolsch, the number four brewer in the Netherlands. While in the U.S. sales to retailers grew 35 percent, volumes in the UK fell by more than 10 percent in a sharply declining market.

The blood-letting at InBev Germany continues. The latest to leave the brewer is Andreas Hilger, Managing Director Marketing. He is to move to the UK in order to help reverse Stella Artois’s flagging fortunes there.

Although the union did not quite achieve its goal of a 6 percent wage increase, a pay rise of 2.9 percent as of March 2008 does not seem bad either.

Many people worry about our climate warming up. Don’t they see the positive side of things? Balmy winters! They are good for beer sales, says Heineken. But that’s about the only positive note to take home from Heineken’s 2007 full year results.