Confectionery giant Mars has announced it will buy Hotel Chocolat for £534 million to help the UK company expand overseas.
Hotel Chocolat said the deal would allow the brand to "grow further and faster". The deal comes after the company suffered sinking demand for its products from cash-strapped consumers in its most recent financial year.
"We know our brand resonates with consumers overseas, but operational supply chain challenges have held us back," said Hotel Chocolat chief executive Angus Thirlwell.
The chocolatier, which was founded as an online retailer in 2004, swung to a loss in the year to July, falling from a pre-tax profit of £21.7m to a loss of £800,000 reportedly due to inflationary pressures, weak consumer sentiment and the cost of restructuring efforts.
Hotel Chocolat said in a statement today (16) they considered the terms of the deal “to be fair and reasonable”, adding that Mars’s global supply chain and commercial relationships would help the company get the expansion of its business abroad back on track.
The company is mostly based in the UK with 124 shops, but has some overseas.
Mars, which employs around 10,000 people in the UK, says the deal will bring a “much-loved brand into its portfolio” and deepen its relationships with consumers.
"The UK has been an important market for Mars, and it expects this to be complemented by the acquisition of Hotel Chocolat, with its distinctive capabilities in product development, luxury gifting and immersive brand experiences," The Guardian quoted a statement by Mars.
For Mars the acquisition is seen as a move into the higher value premium chocolate category. Nestlé made a similar move with its acquisition of Brazilian premium chocolate maker Grupo CRM earlier this year
Two serving postmasters, Brian Smith and Sara Barlow, have been elected to the Post Office board as non-executive directors.
This is the second time in the Post Office’s 360-year history that serving postmasters have been elected to the board. Smith and Barlow will replace Elliot Jacobs and Saf Ismail who were first elected to sit on the board in 2021.
The appointment of Smith and Barlow follows approval from business and trade secretary Jonathan Reynolds. It comes after the Post Office chair Nigel Railton set out an ambitious five-year Transformation Plan for the Post Office to deliver a ‘New Deal for Postmasters’.
Brian Smith is the postmaster for Clocktower Post Office on the Shetland Islands. He has run the branch for 19 years. He said: “I am eager to bring my unique insights, diverse skills, and unwavering commitment to the Post Office's mission to the board. My passion for community engagement, drive for innovation, and a deep understanding of the retail landscape, will all aid me to support the Post Office on its path to modernisation and continued success.”
Sara Barlow is the postmaster for Rainhill, Merseyside. She has run the branch for six years and has been awarded a British Empire Medal for services to business and the community. Barlow said: “I have been an active participant in many postmaster working groups, forums and associations. Whether it’s through Peer Support or in my role on the Wellbeing initiative team, I am driven to help support postmasters on a wide range of issues from remuneration improvements to emotional support.”
Voting to elect two new postmasters as non-executive directors to the Post Office board took place between 30 September and 16 October.
Commenting, post office minister Gareth Thomas, said: “It’s absolutely right that postmasters should play a leading role in shaping the future of the Post Office, providing invaluable experience to ensure it serves the needs of communities across the country. Brian and Sara will make excellent additions to the leadership team, helping to further bridge the gap between branches and the board.”
Railton added: “I am delighted to be welcoming Brian and Sara to the board. We have an ambitious five-year Transformation Plan for the Post Office and both will bring critical real-life experience to the role helping us deliver a ‘New Deal for Postmasters’ that will also benefit the nine million customers that visit our branches every week and who rely on the essential products and services postmasters and their teams provide.”
Following an induction and training programme, covering the corporate and legal aspects of fulfilling the duties of a non-executive director, Smith took up his position on the Board on 4 December and Barlow will take up her position on the board on 28 January 2025.
Current postmaster non-executive director Elliot Jacobs tenure on the board has been extended to bring business continuity to the board alongside Smith and Barlow. Saf Ismail has stepped down from the board.
Welsh retailers are calling on Ministers to pass a budget which is pro-business, avoids adding unwarranted costs onto business, and supports economic growth.
Speaking ahead of the budget, Trudy Davies, owner of the independent newsagents Woosnam & Davies News, pointed out that the current economic climate is incredibly challenging for small businesses and rising costs and the subsequent pressure on incomes are putting immense strain on the businesses.
Davies called on increasing this relief, saying that by doing so, the Welsh Government can recognise the invaluable contributions retailers give.
Welsh Retail Consortium (WRC) has also sent its detailed Welsh Budget recommendations paper to Ministers and MSPs in October. It contained suggestions for cutting the cost of government, delivering competitive taxes and regulation, and delivering on the Retail Action Plan.
The leading trade body has since highlighted the sheer magnitude of the decision in the UK Budget on employer’s national insurance contributions had ‘fundamentally altered the outlook’, as it would add £120 million each year to Welsh retailers’ costs. The WRC says the tax hike will have a disproportionate impact on the retail industry which employs over 120,000 people in Wales.
Speaking ahead of the Welsh Budget, the Head of the Welsh Retail Consortium, Sara Jones, said, "The economic climate remains hugely challenging for the retail industry given a backdrop of little to no growth in retail sales, nosediving footfall and greater outlays to run their business.
"The UK budget has compounded these pressures, with Wales’ retailers now facing a £120 million increase in their tax bill following the Chancellor’s announcement that employer national insurance contributions are to rise. With retailers making decisions about how and where to invest in the coming years, there will much interest in the Welsh draft budget being presented to the Senedd on Tuesday.
"In the face of these pressures, the Welsh Finance Minister has the opportunity to inject some confidence back into the economy, boosting spending and helping to foster much needed investment by businesses.
"It’s vital that the broken business rates system, which is currently holding back investment in jobs and communities across the retail industry, is addressed head on. By introducing a Retail specific discount - a 20% adjustment to retail property rates bills – the Finance Secretary could help drive investment in local high streets and communities, creating jobs and boosting consumer confidence."
Pricer, the in-store automation and communication solutions provider, has announced a collaboration with Google Cloud to accelerate retailers’ pricing automation and shelf-edge digitalisation.
The collaboration, which sees Pricer’s Plaza platform enabled by Google Cloud, will deliver greater speed, scalability and security to power in-store efficiencies and drive enhanced customer experience.
Pricer Plaza offers retailers scalable end-to-end management to run digital in-store systems on a single, unified platform via its sophisticated Software as a Service (SaaS), cloud-based system. Its secure, managed service eliminates manual updates, offering centralised control and automation across the entire store estate and across locales.
Partnering with Google Cloud, which allows retailers to build with Generative AI (Gen AI), deploy apps fast and analyse data in seconds, Pricer will now deliver enhanced speed and scale to in-store automation.
As well as automated real-time pricing and data updates, which sees Plaza deliver 19 million price updates globally every day, the combined solution leverages Google Cloud’s high-speed data processing. This ensures product information and pricing are updated rapidly, dynamically and accurately, whether that’s estate-wide or across different regions and locales.
And, in addition to Pricer Plaza’s DataLoad capabilities, which offer no-code integration to implement a new store in less than two hours, the unified store automation platform can now deploy large-format stores and hypermarkets (<50k ESL stores) overnight. This limits downtime and interference with store operations during opening hours to ensure customer experience isn’t compromised.
Google Cloud’s industry-leading security architecture is also adding even greater protection of data integrity and advanced threat detection and prevention to Pricer Plaza. This means retailers’ store systems are protected from vulnerabilities, with robust back up and data loss recovery capabilities available to be deployed should they ever be needed.
Additional security layers also benefit from Google Cloud’s extensive compliance support, which meets global privacy and security requirements, including GDPR, SOC and ISO standards.
Peter Ward, UK Country Manager at Pricer, commented, “Faced with significant rising cost pressures – from wages to rates – driving in-store operational efficiencies and labour productivity are increasingly becoming the keystones for store execution that drive performance profitably.
"Automation sits at the intersection of delivering both of these key requirements, which is why we’ve sought to deliver even more speed, scale and simplicity with our integration of Plaza on to Google Cloud.”
Retailers face further disruption to festive favorites as nearly 800 workers at Bakkavor’s Spalding plant in Lincolnshire vote for an additional three months of industrial action.
The strike, now in its third month, has already caused shortages of taramasalata, with shelves now seeing gaps in cheese and chive dips, soups, and pasta sauces.
The workers, who are members of the Unite union, are demanding better pay than the current £11.44 per hour—just 10p above the legal minimum for over-21s. With the action extending into the critical holiday season, the impact on party staples could deepen, creating challenges for both retailers and consumers preparing for Christmas celebrations.
This prolonged dispute underscores ongoing tensions in the food production sector amid rising living costs and labor demands.
The Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham, said, “Bakkavor is an incredibly wealthy company with a chief executive on a two million-plus salary. It can fully afford to pay its workers a fair pay increase.
“Our members are showing incredible courage and have remained steadfast in their campaign and will keep fighting until Bakkavor comes to its senses and makes a fair offer. In the meantime, Unite will pursue every avenue in the UK or abroad to ensure that the workers secure a decent deal.”
The ongoing industrial action at Bakkavor’s Spalding plant is impacting supermarket shelves, with dips, soups, and sauces reported to be in lower-than-usual supply ahead of the festive season.
While the company has relocated production of taramasalata to another site to restore availability, some products remain affected, including low-fat cheese and chive dip, which has reportedly ceased production entirely.
The Guardian reports that Tesco faces reduced supplies of cheddar cheese and chive dip, reduced-fat sour cream, and other premium range items like whipped feta with mint, carbonara sauce, and chicken and vegetable soup.
Marks & Spencer is short of one item in its popular "picky tea" range—the reduced-fat sour cream and chive dip. Meanwhile, Waitrose reports shortages of taramasalata, four cheese sauce, and beetroot and feta salad from its own-label lines.
Retail and data analytics experts, Talysis Ltd, have launched a transformational new solution in the grocery market, which can also be adapted for other industries and markets across the world. VOX is Talysis’s AI-powered natural language interface, which allows users to interrogate data, simply by asking for critical insights. The power of curiosity & questioning can now generate data-driven sales growth!
VOX – which stands for voice-operated expert – will enable retailers, wholesalers/retail groups, brands and sales organisations to radically change the way they operate, streamlining processes, improving communication and uncovering hidden growth opportunities. The interface can be used with a business’s own existing data, complemented by the worldwide web; or it can be enhanced further by integrating with any of Talysis’s existing solutions, such as PriceCube or Convenience Data.
The five elements of VOX available at launch can be used separately or in conjunction with each other, depending on the type of business and their requirements. VOX RETAIL empowers store-owners by providing multi-lingual, AI-driven insights and advice on key retail aspects such as product range, pricing, promotions and sales trends. In addition, retail groups can integrate this solution with Talysis’s Convenience Data (CD:UK/Ireland) to enhance performance across their business. VOX WHOLESALE is a comprehensive sales-driving solution that synergises multiple data streams, to deliver insights & opportunities, whilst providing a single point of contact for the whole services offering. This enables retailers to seamlessly interact with data and all other support services in their native tongue. VOX SALES empowers brands & sales organisations by providing voice-enabled insights into retail trading, visit history, marketing collateral and full CRM, enabling them to capitalise on untapped opportunities and optimise their sales strategies. VOX BUSINESS, powered by AI and NLP (Natural Language Processing) technologies, serves as a valuable resource for entire organisations by providing guidance & answers on all internal processes & procedures for all aspects of their work life. And VOX DISPLAY provides an immersive, multi-lingual, AI-driven experience, offering the expertise of seasoned sales consultants and advisors at a fraction of the cost, empowering brands to elevate their customer experience and drive growth. With the ability to transfer this expertise across any type of store environment, this aspect could work equally well within the automotive & technology sectors or grocery retail.
“This truly is a ground-breaking moment for the sector and beyond,” said Ed Roberts, Managing Director of Talysis. “VOX offers businesses the opportunity to make radical improvements in how they operate and will provide expert, data-driven, advice in response to simple questioning, in people’s natural language. From a single-site independent retailer through to the largest blue-chip companies, VOX literally has the answer to enable better engagement with customers and drive business growth.
“VOX is simple to use, like Siri, Alexa or any other voice-operated system and, due to its NLP capabilities, it listens and answers in over 46 different languages, making any interaction completely seamless and its application global. Imagine going into a showroom and talking to the car on display, or quizzing VOX on the POR of a product or its calories or ingredients and being able to deliver this to your customers in their homes, cars, depots or stores, or through your socials, POS and other marketing channels. That is now a reality with VOX!
“As the only company that already offers full end-to-end solutions for the entire wholesale and convenience retail channel, we’re predicting demand for this solution to be absolutely huge. It’s a seminal moment for our business and the sector as a whole.”