NEWS DIGEST
THIS WEEK’S NEWS FOR ALL THE LATEST NEWS, HEAD TO WWW.SLRMAG.CO.UK/CATEGORY/NEWS/
PITRON JOINS MFG Motor Fuel Group (MFG), the UK’s largest independent forecourt operator, has named David Pitron as its new
NEWSTRADE
77 CHARGED OVER EXTINCTION REBELLION NEWSPAPER BLOCKADE
commercial director. Pitron
A TOTAL OF 77 PROTESTERS HAVE BEEN CHARGED WITH CRIMINAL
joins from BP where he worked
OFFENCES FOLLOWING A BLOCKADE OF NEWSPAPER GROUPS AT
for the past 16 years, latterly
THE WEEKEND BY ENVIRONMENTAL CAMPAIGNERS EXTINCTION
as the UK-based global retail
REBELLION.
commercial development director.
E-VOUCHER DEAL PayPoint has entered an exclusive deal with NeoSurf, an organisation which provide pincodes for use across 20,000 different websites, which allows customers to buy Neosurf pre-paid pincodes at
A major blockade of newspaper groups at the weekend by environmental campaigners Extinction Rebellion has led to 77 protestors being charged with criminal offences. The campaign caused huge disruption to national newspaper deliveries affecting around 1.5m copies. The actions at Broxbourne in Hertfordshire and Knowsley in Merseyside were condemned by
the News UK-owned Newsprinters business as an “attack on all of the free press” which had affected workers going about their jobs, and others such as newsagents who face a “financial penalty”. The company transferred printing to other sites, but delays were caused to some deliveries of The Sun, The Times, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times.
over 27,000 PayPoint retailers across the UK. Cash can also be used to top-up balances on Neosurf e-wallets and prepaid cards.
WASTE NOT Sainsbury has extended its in-store food donation programme by allowing customers to make online donations to the FareShare food waste and hunger charity as part of their shop. All funds will go towards buying food for redistribution across FareShare’s UK network.
SMART CHECKOUT PAYMENTS ‘TO HIT $387BN BY 2025’ A new report from Juniper Research has predicted that the value of retail transactions processed by frictionless smart checkout technologies will hit $387bn in the next five years, despite the fact that the value processed in 2020 will be only $2bn. The ‘Digital Retail Technologies‘ report says the massive growth will be driven by retailers looking for sustainable business models in the wake of Covid-19. Amazon is already ahead of the curve on this frictionless model with its ‘Just Walk Out’ technology that it
6 I SLRMAG.CO.UK / ISSUE 21 / WEDNESDAY 9TH SEPTEMBER 2020
has been using its own Amazon Go stores for several years. Its move into licensing out its technology to other retailers will only help generate further growth. The report also predicts that retailers will invest over $23bn globally in Artificial Intelligence technology by 2025, up from $5bn this year.
