The region, a stronghold of the conservative opposition to socialist President Luis Arce, is in its sixth day of protests that have seen thousands of people take to the streets and nights of clashes with weaponized fireworks and cars burned.

On Tuesday hundreds of women marched to the city police headquarters in support of Camacho, demanding his release.

On the nearby streets were burnt-out vehicles, smouldering fires and blockades from the overnight clashes.

The protests, sparked by the Dec. 28 arrest of Camacho over an alleged coup in 2019, are deepening divides between lowland Santa Cruz and the highland, more indigenous political capital La Paz, which have long butted heads over politics and state funds.

Camacho was seized by special police forces, taken out of the province by helicopter and is now in a maximum security jail in the highland city El Alto. He denies all charges that relate to the divisive removal of former socialist leader Evo Morales in 2019.

Santa Cruz leaders pledge to fight until Camacho is released, picketing government buildings and stopping transport of grains. There are also calls for a federal system giving the city more autonomy and state funds.

“We have a mandate from our assembly that nothing leaves Santa Cruz and that is what we are going to do,” said Rómulo Calvo, head of the powerful Pro Santa Cruz civic group.

Marcelo Cruz, president of the International Heavy Transport Association of Santa Cruz, said routes were being blocked so no trucks could leave the province.

“No grain, animal or supply from the factories should leave Santa Cruz for the rest of the country. The blocking points are being reinforced,” he said.

“Outlaw state”

Morales and allies — including current president Arce — say his ouster was a coup and have prosecuted opposition figures they blame for it. Jeanine Anez, who became interim president after his removal, was jailed for 10 years in 2022.

Human rights groups say the government is using a weak justice system to go after its opponents.

“We are no longer a state of law, we are an outlaw state,” said Erwin Bazan, from the right-wing Creemos party, saying the charges against Camacho were politically motivated.

Others blame Camacho for tensions in 2019 which saw dozens killed in protests, including supporters of Morales.

“Let him go to jail for 30 years. We want justice,” said Maria Laura, a supporter of the ruling Movement for Socialism (MAS) party.

Morales remains the party’s leader though has at times clashed with new president Arce.

Paul Coca, a lawyer and analyst in La Paz, said the internal divisions in the ruling party were partly behind the arrest, with Arce trying to neutralize criticism from Morales.

“(Arce) had to confront his party leader or directly go against Luis Fernando Camacho. And he obviously chose to go all out against Camacho,” he said.

The blockade could dent food supply to other parts of the country as well as exports and growth as Bolivia grapples with a large fiscal deficit and low reserves.

“Santa Cruz is the economic stronghold of Bolivia,” said Gary Rodríguez, general manager of the Bolivian Institute of Foreign Trade (IBCE).

The region is the main producer of soy, sugar cane, wheat, rice, corn and livestock.

“All this great private productive effort is now in danger.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Adam Jourdan and Daniel Ramos; additional reporting by Monica Machicao.

The post Bolivia farm region blocks borders, grain transport in protests appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

So he asked to buy the entire vintage.

It was the sort of offer, made over roast lamb and vegetables at a dinner in Wang’s honour, that has sent Australian wine exports to China soaring by 63 per cent, hitting A$848 million (US$660 million) last year. And Col Peterson, the winemaker behind the Chardonnay, said Wang is the kind of buyer who has upended Australia’s wine industry.

At the dinner party, Wang, wearing a red hoodie and Prada loafers, said through a translator who works at Peterson’s Hunter Valley vineyard that the wine was “amazing.”

“I’ve tried a lot of wines from different countries, and after that I thought: ‘Australian wine is very good,’” said Wang, whose purchase at the vineyard, some 250 km (155 miles) north of Sydney, sought to add more wine to a collection already full of Burgundy and Bordeaux.

His association with Peterson illustrates how Australian winemakers are cultivating connections in China, the world’s fastest-growing wine market, that are bearing valuable fruit even as entrenched European exporters are hitting headwinds.

Policy changes have helped too: Australian wine sales to China have more than doubled since a free trade agreement between the countries took effect in December 2015, cutting tariffs from as high as 20 per cent to about three per cent.

Expansion, uncorked

France is by far the dominant wine seller to China, holding about 40 per cent of the imported wine sales market. Australia has been in second place for a decade, according to figures from International Wine and Spirit Research and Wine Australia.

But where French sales growth has been steady, Australia’s has skyrocketed.

“In the first-tier cities here, in Shanghai or Beijing, we see more and more wines coming from Australia, Spain, Chile because consumers are more open minded to new origins and styles,” said Guillaume Deglise, chief executive officer of Vinexpo, which organizes wine and spirits trade fairs.

“At the same time in the second- or third-tier cities, the same consumers, especially the younger consumers, are also interested in these countries because they offer a more competitive option than France,” he added.

Over the past decade, Australia’s exports to China by value have expanded roughly twice as much as volume, as sales of higher-end wines such as Penfolds Grange have grown most of all — leading to record profits for its producer, Treasury Wine Estates.

A flood of investment

At the same time, Chinese investment has flowed through the wine supply chain, with a flurry of relatively small purchases of Australian wine assets.

Last May, Chinese wine distributor YesMyWine made one of the largest investments with its purchase of a 15 per cent stake, and a board seat along with it, in Australian Vintage Ltd., Australia’s fifth-largest winemaker. The A$16.5-million deal came through its investment vehicle Vintage China Fund LP.

In January, Yantai Changyu Pioneer Wine Co. Ltd. bought a majority stake in South Australian vineyard Kilikanoon for A$15.5 million, on the heels of several smaller deals in recent years.

Cain Beckett, director of Hunter Valley realty agency Jurds, said he sells a few vineyards a month to Chinese buyers.

Australia’s tax office, the only official tracker of foreign agricultural land purchases, said privacy concerns prevented it from disclosing how many vineyards were Chinese owned.

Stephen Strachan, director of Adelaide-based wine consultant Gaetjens Langley, said about half of foreign interest in vineyard purchases across Australia comes from China.

Beckett estimates 50 out of 250 vineyards in the Hunter Valley region are Hong Kong or Chinese owned.

Among them is Iron Gate Estate, with Semillon, Verdelho and Shiraz vines, bought several weeks ago by the Hong Kong-based Kuo family, which owns an electric parts manufacturing plant in Shenzhen.

“We’re looking to increase (production), but Asia for us is a place where we are still finding our way,” said Gavin Kuo, 38, who moved from Sydney to manage the vineyard.

“But we have to be careful because we are a boutique winery and we can’t actually change certain flavours just for an Asian market,” he said.

Making taste

Since China replaced the U.S. as Australia’s largest export market by value in 2016, winemakers have redoubled efforts to adjust, hiring Mandarin-speaking staff, turning out Chinese-language labels and laying out chopsticks with meals at their restaurants.

Australian producers who had mostly switched to sealing bottles with screw caps have returned to corks to meet Chinese expectations; French wines, which typically use corks, are considered more traditional and prestigious.

A few Australian vintners have experimented with changing the way their wines taste.

“It’s the one question I would say that we grapple with most in terms of export,” winemaker Bill Sneddon told Reuters at Allandale Winery in the Hunter Valley.

“Do we make wines that we think will fit the market, or do we make the best wines we can and try and fit the market to the wine? I don’t think we’ve got an answer to that, honestly; we’ve tried both,” he said.

In the end, he added, his winery just wants “to make the best wines we can, stylistically, from the fruit we’ve got.”

Other winemakers fret that Chinese enthusiasm could vanish, or that producers could be buffeted by the kind of import-rule changes that hit Australian milk powder and vitamin makers with high tariffs.

“Everyone is making hay, but like everything there are risks, and these sort of growth levels can’t continue. We all know that,” said Tony Battaglene, chief executive at the Winemakers Federation of Australia.

For winemakers like Sneddon and Peterson, it means selling most of their wine domestically.

That was part of the reason why, after dinner, Peterson declined Wang’s offer to buy up his pride Chardonnay, offering a single bottle as a Lunar New Year gift instead.

“We normally don’t open it ourselves, unless we’re with friends or someone else is there,” he said.

The post For Australian winemakers, Chinese relationships are bearing fruit appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The combination will help Post’s existing brands, which include Honey Bunches of Oats and Grape-Nuts, to expand overseas, while allowing for greater distribution of Weetabix and its Barbara’s brand in North America, the St. Louis-based company said on Tuesday.

The acquisition of Weetabix’s manufacturing and distribution assets in Europe should also allow Post to more easily digest other overseas businesses that might become available, in cereal and beyond, CEO Rob Vitale said.

“What this does is allow us to look at a broader array of opportunities,” Vitale told analysts, noting that Post regularly looks at several M+A opportunities at the same time.

The sale comes just five years after Chinese state-owned Bright Food took control of Weetabix in a deal that valued it at 1.2 billion pounds at the time of a major overseas push stretching from Australia to Israel.

The brand has struggled to grow significantly since as cold cereals in Western markets face more competition from breakfast bars and Greek yogurt, and consumers grow more concerned about how much sugar is in what they eat.

Vitale said Weetabix had 2016 revenue of 410 million pounds, which was not that much higher than in 2015. Looking ahead, he said Weetabix’s revenue would remain flat, with earnings being boosted by cost-savings from combining the businesses.

Weetabix, which has marketed its products in Canada since 1967, today has significant Canadian assets, mainly in the production plant it’s operated since 1978 at Cobourg, Ont., on Lake Ontario south of Peterborough.

The Cobourg plant today makes breakfast cereals under the Weetabix, Alpen and Barbara’s brands for sale in the North American market, as well as GrainShop, a high-fibre cereal sold only in Canada since 2003.

Some like it hot

In China, which had been central to Bright Food’s purchase, retail sales of cold cereal have nearly doubled over the past five years, but it remains a relatively small category, as most locals prefer hot breakfasts.

“It’s probably going to be a much better fit with Post,” said Liberum analyst Robert Waldschmidt.

Post has agreed in principle to establish a joint venture with Bright Food and Baring to manage the Weetabix China operations, which remain a very small part of the business.

The latest sale price, 1.4 billion pounds, is 11.7 times the 120 million pounds of adjusted annual EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) that Post said Weetabix will contribute before cost savings. It estimates those savings to reach 20 million pounds per year by the third full fiscal year after the deal is completed.

Vitale said the multiple was higher than its past deals, but said it was justified by Weetabix’s strong market share, future expansion opportunities, Post’s ability to fund it in cash and the favourable tax environment in Britain.

Still, Post shares were down two per cent in early trade in New York, underperforming the S+P 500 index, which was broadly flat.

Shopping for food brands

For Bright Food, which makes dairy products, candy and other foodstuffs, the sale does not mean an end to its international ambitions, Shanghai-based Bright spokesman Pan Jianjun said.

“This is a part of our internationalization strategy. Selling assets enables us to better expand. Going forward Bright will stick to our overseas push,” he said.

The sale would give Bright extra firepower should it want to bid for any other food assets currently on the block.

The global packaged food industry is in the midst of a wave of dealmaking, with giants Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser both selling multi-billion-dollar food assets.

Bright Food took control of Weetabix from private equity firm Lion Capital, which had held its stake for over a decade. Baring Private Equity Asia subsequently bought Lion’s remaining stake in 2015.

Post said the deal will immediately add to its adjusted operating profit margins and its free cash flow, excluding one-time transaction expenses. It expects to fund the deal with cash on hand and borrowings under its existing credit facility.

Post also reported net sales for the second quarter of US$1.25 billion, a net loss of US$4 million and adjusted EBITDA of US$228 million. It affirmed its 2017 adjusted EBITDA of US$920 million to $950 million, excluding any contribution from Weetabix.

— Reporting for Reuters by Martinne Geller in London, Adam Jourdan in Shanghai and Lauren Hirsch in New York; additional reporting by Parikshit Mishra in Bangalore.

The post Post tucks into British breakfast cereal Weetabix appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

This winter, more than 100 people have died, but few birds have been slaughtered, there are few masks on the streets and little sign of any consumer reaction, let alone the panic seen in 2013.

The number of posts mentioning “bird flu” or “H7N9” on China’s popular Sina Weibo microblog — a useful proxy for gauging consumer interest or concern — peaked at just over 40,000 on Feb. 15, after the Health Ministry said as many as 79 people died from H7N9 bird flu in January alone.

• Read more: Bird flu found in Tennessee chicken flock
• Read more: WHO says bird flu outbreaks raise alarm
• Read more: China reports more severe form of bird flu, threat to poultry

At the peak of the 2013 outbreak, daily posts topped 850,000.

“Everyone’s just used to it now,” said Yuan Haojie, 24, a real estate worker in Shanghai. “Every year we seem to have some sort of bird flu outbreak, but it never seems to affect anyone I know. Gradually you stop worrying about it.”

The 2013 outbreak was the first in China of the H7N9 bird flu strain. The virus this year appears to be less pathogenic among poultry, which show few symptoms, but more deadly among humans in direct contact with infected birds at live markets and on farms.

Four years ago, the outbreak cost the economy an estimated US$6.5 billion, took chicken off the menu at schools and on airplanes, and prompted the widespread slaughter of millions of birds. The biggest impact this year is that Chinese chicken prices have dropped to their lowest levels in more than a decade.

“In 2013, there was a great panic in the consumer market, and people were afraid to eat poultry,” said Pan Chenjun, Hong Kong-based senior analyst at Rabobank. “Consumer market sentiment now isn’t so bad. People are more resilient because coverage has been quite limited.”

‘Online rumour?’

Many consumers and fast-food chain workers Reuters spoke to were unaware of the severity of this season’s outbreak.

“Is this one of those online rumours?” asked the duty manager at one KFC outlet in the northern mining city of Shuangyashan. The fried chicken brand is operated locally by Yum China Holdings Inc.

Yum, which reported a “significant, negative impact” during the 2013 outbreak, did not respond to requests for comment. The company’s U.S.-listed shares are down less than five per cent so far this year.

A worker at local chicken chain Dicos in Shanghai said this winter’s bird flu outbreak had not hit sales, and the firm had not given staff any specific directives on how to respond to diners’ concerns.

Dicos, owned by Taiwan’s Ting Hsin International Group, declined to comment.

Global health bodies and government organizations in China have long said properly cooked chicken is not a safety risk.

Some online commenters and experts have said Beijing was slow to respond to the outbreak this year and data on human infections and deaths was not disclosed soon enough.

China’s health authorities said Feb. 16 they would tighten controls on poultry markets and the transport of live birds, but noted the spread of the virus among people was slowing.

China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention has said the vast majority of people infected by H7N9 reported exposure to poultry, indicating little person-to-person infection.

In southern Guangzhou, 24-year-old office administrator Li Lishan said there were bans on poultry markets in her area and people were quite worried about the disease. However, she said she was still eating chicken.

“The days before the trading ban I went crazy buying up chicken,” she said, acknowledging there was a risk. “I know, I know. I’m just used to eating it.”

The post Chinese consumers seem to shrug off deadly bird flu outbreak appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

McDonald’s Corp and KFC’s parent Yum Brands Inc apologized to Chinese customers on Monday after it emerged that Shanghai Husi Food Co Ltd, a unit of U.S.-based OSI Group LLC, had supplied expired meat to the two chains.

On Tuesday, Starbucks said some of its cafes previously sold products containing chicken originally sourced from Shanghai Husi, a firm that was shut down on Sunday by local regulators after a TV report showed staff using expired meat and picking up meat from the floor to add to the mix.

A Tokyo-based spokesman at McDonald’s Holdings Co (Japan) Ltd said the company had sourced about a fifth of its Chicken McNuggets from Shanghai Husi and had halted sales of the product on Monday. Alternative supplies of chicken have been found in Thailand and China, he added. The company’s shares briefly fell as much as 1.4 percent to a 15-month low before closing down 0.4 percent.

China’s food watchdog said it ordered regional offices to carry out spot checks on all firms which had used Shanghai Husi products, and would inspect all of parent OSI’s sites around China to see if enough has been done to ensure food safety. It said the case could be handed over to the police.

The regulator’s Shanghai branch said in a statement on Tuesday it had demanded production, quality control and sales records from OSI. It added it already ordered McDonald’s to seal over 4,500 boxes of suspected meat products and Yum’s Pizza Hut to seal over 500 boxes of beef.

Fast-food chain Burger King and Dicos, China’s third-ranked fast food chain owned by Ting Hsin International, said they would remove Shanghai Husi food products from their outlets. Pizza chain Papa John’s International Inc said on its Weibo blog that it had taken down all meat products supplied by Shanghai Husi and cut ties with the supplier.

FOOD SAFETY CONCERNS

Food safety is one of the top issues for Chinese consumers after a scandal in 2008 where dairy products tainted with the industrial chemical melamine led to the deaths of six infants and made many thousands sick. Other food scandals have hit the meat and dairy industries in recent years, and many Chinese look to foreign brands as offering higher safety standards.

China is McDonald’s third-biggest market by number of restaurants and Yum’s top market by revenue. McDonald’s is due to report quarterly earnings later on Tuesday.

The scare has stirred local consumers and become one of the most discussed topics online among the country’s influential ‘netizens’, with some users spreading long lists of firms thought to be tarnished.

The incident highlights the difficulty in ensuring quality and safety along the supply chain in China. Wal-Mart Stores Inc came under the spotlight early this year after a supplier’s donkey meat product was found to contain fox meat. It also came under fire for selling expired duck meat in 2011.

Starbucks said on its Chinese microblog site that it had no direct business relationship with Shanghai Husi, but that some of its chicken acquired from another supplier had originally come from Husi for its “Chicken Apple Sauce Panini” products. This had been sold in 13 different provinces and major cities. The company added that all the products had already been removed from its shelves.

Burger King said in a Weibo statement posted late on Monday that it had taken off its shelves all meat products supplied by Shanghai Husi Food and had launched an investigation.

Dicos said it pulled all ham products supplied by Shanghai Husi, and would stop serving its ham sandwich product for breakfast. “We will continue to carry out a probe into Shanghai Husi Food and its related firms, to understand whether or not it followed national regulations,” Dicos said in a statement.

Swedish furniture firm IKEA, which has in-store food outlets, said on Weibo that Shanghai Husi had previously been a supplier, but had not provided the firm with products since September last year. Domino’s Pizza Inc and Doctor’s Associates Inc’s Subway brand, which were named in online reports as being supplied meat from Shanghai Husi, said their outlets in China did not use meat products from the firm.

Yoshinoya-parent Hop Hing Group Holdings Ltd, Japanese convenience store FamilyMart Co Ltd and Chinese chain Wallace urged diners not to worry, and said they did not currently use any products from Shanghai Husi.

The post China food scandal drags in Starbucks, Burger King and McDonald’s appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

State-run Xinhua news agency said authorities planned to slaughter birds at two live poultry markets in Shanghai and another in Hangzhou after new samples of the H7N9 virus were detected in birds at the three sites.

More than 20,000 birds have been culled at another Shanghai market where traces of the virus were found this week.

Officials in Shanghai, China’s financial hub, closed all the city’s live poultry markets on Saturday, emptying food stalls.

All poultry trading was banned in Nanjing, another eastern Chinese city, although local officials said they had not found any trace of the bird flu virus and declared that chicken on the retail market was safe to eat, official media reported.

The new strain of bird flu has infected 18 people in China, all in the east. Six people have died in an outbreak that has spread concern overseas.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said that 10 infected people were severe cases and two were mild cases. It reiterated there was no evidence of ongoing human-to-human transmission of the virus.

“More than 530 close contacts of the confirmed cases are being closely monitored. In Jiangsu, investigation is ongoing into a contact of an earlier confirmed case who developed symptoms of illness,” the Geneva-based WHO said in a statement on Saturday.

There were no signs of panic in Shanghai, where four of the six people died, and people generally said they were not worried. But the culling, which has been widely publicized, did underline for some how close to home the issue had become.

“Now it’s just downstairs,” said Liu Leting, a user of Weibo, China’s version of Twitter which has more than 500 million users.

“Suddenly I discover that I’m living in an epidemic zone!”

In one city restaurant, a waitress said they planned to stop serving chicken because of the outbreak.

“After we sell out the chicken in stock, we will not buy new chicken and will stop serving chicken dishes for the time being,” said the waitress, who declined to be identified.

While the strain does not appear to be transmitted from human to human, authorities in mainland China and Hong Kong said they were taking extra precautions.

Hong Kong’s government said it was intensifying surveillance of travellers and poultry coming into the city.

China’s Food and Drug Administration said it had fast-tracked approval for intravenous anti-influenza drug Peramivir, developed by the U.S.-listed biotechnology firm BioCryst Pharmaceuticals.

Peramivir is in medical trials to prove its effectiveness against type-A and type-B influenza, the administration said in a statement. The H7N9 strain belongs to the type-A group.

Shanghai authorities have stressed the H7N9 virus remained sensitive to Roche’s drug Tamiflu and those who were diagnosed early could be cured.

China and Hong Kong were badly hit by a 2002-03 epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome that started in China and killed about one-tenth of the 8,000 people infected worldwide.

— Adam Jourdan writes for Reuters from Shanghai. Additional reporting for Reuters by Farah Master in Hong Kong, Vivi Lin and Reuters TV in Shanghai, and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva.

The post Two new bird flu cases in China amid poultry crackdown appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.