News

Welcome to our weekly round-up of news from the packaging industry's biggest clients.

Brand owners

It has been a week of innovation, new launches and huge profits for the brand owners. Whatever happened to the credit crunch?

Fruit producer Del Monte announced a £1m marketing campaign to support the launch of its new frozen fruit range which will initially include seven different punnets of fruit and two smoothie mixes.

Food giant Nestle, meanwhile, claimed to be on the verge of launching the 'biggest' innovation in baby food since the move from tins to glass when it introduces its NaturNes range across Europe.

Coca-Cola has extended it partnership with World Wildlife Fund with the aim of reducing its water use, cutting its carbon emissions and to push for sustainable agricultural practices.

The World's favourite airline British Airways is rolling out a media campaign to encourage travellers to visit new destinations and experience new cultures. The airline is seeking a greater association with leisure tourism.

Royal Dutch Shell reported profit of £4.8bn for the third quarter of the year. Chief executive Jeroen van der Veer called the results "satisfactory" - maybe that's because two days earlier BP posted its biggest-ever quarterly profit of £6.4bn.

It was a similar story for consumer products firm Unilever, which announced that pre-tax profit rose 83% to EUR2.5bn in the third quarter of the year.

Meanwhile, Colgate-Palmolive posted earnings of $499.9m in the quarter, up from $420.1m in the same period last year.

Retailers

Tesco is trialling Every Comment Helps - a new feedback service which it hopes will enable it to get more insight into what customers think of the company.

Meanwhile, according to market research firm TNS, Tesco's positioning as 'Britain's biggest discounter' is putting consumers off. It found that Tesco's growth in September slowed to 4%, compared with a 14% rise posted by German discounters Aldi and Lidl.

Urban Fresh Fruit, the dried-fruit company, has secured listings in 60 Topshop outlets. The deal coincides with a revamp of the fruit brand's packaging, which will carry messages such as 'Not a bag of crisps' in a bid to appear fun.

Finally, frozen food specialist Farmfoods reported increased pre-tax profit of £5m for the 12-months to December 2007, compared with £2.2m a year earlier.