Blog: Faster than the speed of light

Catherine Sleep | 22 July 2004

Sometimes the news moves faster than feels comfortable. Last week just-food news editor Kate Barker wrote a feature about the Chinese retail sector. For years it’s been touted as the next big destination for western retailers seeking to expand beyond their saturated home markets. The world’s two largest retailers, Carrefour of France and Wal-Mart of the USA, had cautiously dipped a toe in this notoriously tough market, but their smaller competitors seemed loath to follow.

And yet… just as we were putting the final touches to her feature, what do you know? Out of the blue Tesco announced it had agreed a £140 million 50/50 joint venture agreement with Chinese food and beverage producer Ting Hsin, whose subsidiary Ting Cao owns the Hymall chain of stores in China. I assured Kate this was good news rather than bad, as it made her article even more timely than before… but it did of course need rewriting!

Anyway, members can enjoy the fruits of her labour in the current Feature of the Week, while an open-access feature brings you a profile of the Philippines food sector. A word of warning: don’t read that one when you’re hungry as Bruce Hoggard describes the local cuisine in tantalising detail as well the mechanics of the food industry.