SA Breweries is big, very big. And that's why it's an easy target for those who loathe big business and all it represents, true or not. In this self-penned column in the Financial Mail, Norman Adami, chairman and MD of SAB, outlines how the brewing giant is working to retain the personal connection with its consumers; the importance it puts on exerting a strong, conscious emphasis on applying the human touch.

South Africa is now a priority market for Kraft Foods, said Sanjay Khosla, President, Developing Markets, Kraft Foods, during a recent visit from the company’s US-based global headquarters. The amalgamation with Cadbury in 2010 gives the company a much larger footprint in the country, adding the SA market to the roster of ten priority developing markets that will receive disproportionate investment.

Sean Murphy, recently-appointed Kraft Foods managing director for the company’s Southern Africa business, says - surely with some understatement - that one of the biggest challenges of the February 2010 acquisition of Cadbury, is bringing the two companies together under one culture.

Pietro Ferrero, a chief executive of the famous Ferrero Rocher brand and heir to Italy's largest fortune, has died at the age of 47 in Cape Town after an apparent heart attack while cycling.

So Gourmet, renowned in South Africa for putting sexy into condiments with its So!Go brand, has been bought by Ububele Foods, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ububele Holdings, the food group listed on the Altx of the JSE.

The tough restrictions on health claims in R146 (the regulations governing labelling of foodstuffs in SA) are likely to be amended soon. But, cautions Nigel Sunley, a leading food industry consultant and part of the Consulting in Food Labelling team, the new parameters will not equate to any significant relaxation of the law.

Bruce Cohen, a former journalist on the Mail & Guardian, and in recent years the founder of Absolute Organix, has blogged on what he views as some overly heavy-handed tactics from Tiger Brands over baby food.

While poachers risk life and liberty extracting abalone off the shores of Hermanus, the pricey delicacy is being produced in tons not far away by Abagold, an SA aquaculture success story. Two decades ago this company helped pioneer what has become the world’s largest cultured abalone industry. It is so successful that a private equity firm, Inspired Evolution, has just pumped R52,5m into it.