Topic “In the News News” — Exporter Magazine

UPS has started offering a new ocean freight service that promises up to 20% faster door-to-door delivery than other less-than-container-load (LCL) services on the market, according to the Shipping Gazette. Consumers in Germany and France are more likely to respond to positive clean label terminology on food products than ‘free-from’ claims that are popular in the UK, according to FoodNavigator.com. Global Industry Analyst (GIA) estimates that the global probiotics market will be worth USD$28.8 billion (NZD$39.34 billion) by 2015, even though the market is still considered to be in infancy, according to NutraIngredients.com. Fonterra has completed an NZ$8 million investment in its UHT milk processing facilities in Auckland in a bid to meet growing demand in Asia and the Pacific, according to DairyReporter.com. The report said researchers from food-maker Mars, technology giant IBM, several universities and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have almost completely sequenced the genome of the Forastero cacao tree, which accounts for 80-90% of the world’s cocoa production. Japan’s Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda confirmed that Japan has intervened in the currency market for the first time since March 2004 to stem the yen’s rise, which has spiked to a 15-year highs against the US dollar and severely battered Japan’s export-led recovery, according to Xinhua news.