Purity Life Health Products continues its business strategy to move away from manufacturing products and moving toward becoming one of Canada’s leading distributors in natural health products. The company recently sold its Quest and Nature’s Harmony brands to C.C. Natural Products Tech Limited, a company based out of Coquitlam, British Columbia.

“As part of the sale, Purity Life will continue to distribute the brands,” said Matthew James, the owner of Purity Life Health Products. “The sale of the brands is another step forward for Purity Life as it maintains its focus on being Canada’s largest distributor of natural health products to Canadian Health Food retailers.”

The Organic Council of Ontario Board of Directors has appointed Tom Manley of Homestead Organics as the organization’s new President. Mr. Manley succeeds Jenn Pfenning, from Pfennings Organic Farm, who served as OCO’s President for 18 months.

Tom Manley has called on OCO’s members to step forward and invest their skills within the organization.

“The organic value chain in Ontario is only as strong as the engagement of its organic entrepreneurs,” Manley said.
Currently, OCO’s Board of Directors is looking for additional members who have IT, marketing, and communications skills.

A recent report, published by Transparency Market Research, forecasts that the global food and beverages market will be worth $187.8 billion by 2019. The report entitled, “Organic Food & Organic Beverages Market – Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2013 – 2019,” reveals that the organics market has seen impressive growth in recent years.

According to the report, an increased number of people are becoming more aware of the health benefits of using organic products, which, consequently, has caused the market to grow exponentially.

Loblaw Companies Limited is now stocking their shelves with beer in 19 of its grocery stores including Loblaws, Real Canadian Superstore, Your Independent Grocer, and Fortinos. The company plans to eventually sell hundreds of beer—both domestic and imported options.

“This is a historic first step for our company and for the Ontario government, giving customers the greater convenience of shopping for groceries and beer in one stop,” said Grant Froese, the Chief Operating Officer of Loblaw Companies Limited.

The 19 stores will stock their shelves with a tailored initial assortment of brands. In January, Loblaws will expand their display space to include more than 200 selections of domestic, import and Ontario craft beer. Loblaws plans to allocate 50 per cent of the aforementioned display space to local or craft beer. Additional opportunities will be available for regional favourites on a store-by-store basis.

According to the results of The Harris Poll ®, 50 per cent of Americans say it’s important to choose locally grown or locally sourced items and opposite 50 per cent believe it’s not.

Sixty seven per cent say it’s important to buy local products in the produce department. Among other departments mentioned in the poll are dairy (56%), bakery (55%), meat (52%), deli (43%), seafood (39%) and frozen foods (26%) departments.

The perceived importance of buying local is more on par with whether items are antibiotic/hormone free (53%) or contain artificial colors/flavors (50%), and is well ahead of whether items are organic (34%).

These results are based on 2,225 U.S. adults surveyed online between October 14 and 19, 2015.

Wal-Mart owned supermarket chain Asda has been named as one of the top 20 best performing retail websites in the last quarter of the year. The rating, which was done by Sitemorse on the UK’s top 500 retailers’ sites, gave the company a score of 5.72 out of 10—up 3.58 points from its Q3 ratng of 2.14.

To calculate these results, Sitemorse used automated software to read each retailer’s online platform to check quality, user experience, accessibility, performance and SEO. This generates a ranking figure that is represented on a 10-point scale.

Asda is one of two grocery retailers in the top 20, the other being family baker Waterfields.

Thayers Natural, Inc. has named John Reppucci as their new vice-president of sales. In this position, he will serve a strategic role, working to maintain and develop the business, provide strong leadership to the sales team and identify strategic opportunities for the Thayers brand.

Reppucci comes to the company with over 15 years of experience in the natural products industry. For the past nine years, he worked at Kiss My Face, LLC, where he was also the vice-president of sales.

Thayers looks forward to many years of collaboration with Reppucci and is grateful to have someone of his experience and reputation on their team.