Global Update

Home shopping on TV

Iceland, the British frozen food chain, is testing a home-shopping service that allows customers to order their groceries from a live personal shopping assistant via interactive television. The service will use a new technology called iSeeTV that has been developed by Media Logic in the U.K. To connect to iSeeTV, shoppers only need a television, a cable connection and a telephone line. Iceland argues that the technology makes home shopping a much faster and more pleasurable experience than typing in orders over the Internet. It says 47% of consumers are more likely to purchase their shopping with iSeeTV technology than over the Internet. Datamonitor, a U.K. research company, predicts that one in four households in Europe and the United States will have access to interactive television within the next three years.

Out of Africa

Shoprite, the largest supermarket group in South Africa, has entered the Egyptian market as part of its ambition to become the dominant food retailer in Africa by 2004. The company's first Egyptian store is scheduled to open in Cairo this month, and another three outlets are planned for next year. The company says it hopes to buy stores from the Egyptian government when around 300 state-owned outlets are privatized within the next few months. Shoprite also intends to use Egypt as a springboard into other countries in north and west Africa. The South African company will find itself in direct competition in Egypt with U.K. supermarket chain Sainsbury's, which opened its first store in the country earlier this year.

Tesco eyes Malaysia, Indonesia

Is Ahold about to sell some of its Malaysian supermarkets to Tesco? According to a report in The Sunday Telegraph, Tesco is considering a bid for either the Tops or Parkson supermarket chains, both of which are owned by Ahold. Tops is Malaysia's largest food retailer with about 40 supermarkets, while Parkson operates 30 supermarkets that were sold to Ahold in 1998. Tesco, which already has a presence in three Asian markets–Thailand, South Korea and Taiwan–would use Malaysia as a foothold to gain entry into the Chinese and Japanese markets. However, a spokesman for Tops said the report was based on rumors and wrong information. Tesco, along with two other foreign retailers, is also believed to be interested in entering the Indonesian retail market. The Indonesian Retail Association says that Tesco, Casino from France and Giant from Malaysia are seeking local partners.

Carrefour quits Hong Kong

Carrefour has decided to close its four hypermarkets in Hong Kong only two years after entering the former British colony. The company blames Hong Kong's restrictive urban development laws for its inability to find new store sites there and attain critical mass as quickly as it would have liked. According to reports in the Hong Kong press, Carrefour may also have been squeezed by some local suppliers that tried to prevent the French chain from discounting prices.

(For more information about CIES–The Food Business Forum, visitwww.ciesnet.com.)