Entries Tagged 'Australian Retail Interactive' ↓

New Zealand king salmon, the biggest of the salmon species and the richest in Omega-3 oil, will soon go on auction at the Sydney Fish Market

The Sydney Fish Market (SFM) is negotiating with suppliers to introduce New Zealand king salmon at its weekday auctions, providing stiff competition for locally grown Tasmanian salmon and ocean trout.

Graham Turk, SFM managing director, said Tasmanian suppliers did not go through the SFM but distributed their products directly to Australian distributors.

He said distributors in Sydney had expressed preference for buying king salmon through the SFM Dutch clock auction system.

SFM has been using the Dutch auction since 1989. Held from 5.30am every weekday, the Dutch auction is a silent auction which begins at the highest price and drops until a bid is made.

NZ King Salmon is already exported and sold in small quantities directly to distributors in Australia under the Regal Salmon brand which is supplied by The New Zealand King Salmon Company.

The sale of NZ king salmon through the Dutch auction at SFM, the second biggest fish market in the world after Tokyo, is likely to increase sales volume, bringing more king salmon products to the restaurants and homes of Sydney.

The NZ King Salmon Company processes about 7300t of salmon a year, making it one of the biggest global producers of farmed king salmon. About 66% of production is exported.

Also called Chinook or spring salmon, king salmon is a premium eating fish, native of the northern Pacific Ocean. The biggest of the Pacific salmon family, it can get up to 57kg.

It is a firm-fleshed fish with an attractive orage-red colour and can be served in a wide variety of cuts from fine fillets to steaks, portions or whole fish.

Known for its big size and flavorful flesh, the king salmon is the state fish of Alaska and a popular game fish.

King salmon was first introduced to NZ for game fishing as far back as the 1850s but it was not until fish bred from imported Californian eggs were released into the South Island rivers that they started to return from the sea to spawn in the late 1800s while king salmon farming did not start until 1983.

The commercial NZ King Salmon typically weighs between 3.5kg and 4kg - about double the size of Atlantic salmon from Tasmania - and has the highest natural oil content of all salmon.

A 150g portion of NZ King Salmon is said to provide the complete daily requirement of Omega-3, sough for its health properties.

Omega-3 is said to provide protection against heart disease and certain cancers, alleviate arthritic pain and boost the immune system.

The variety of cuts is a chef’s delight. Rich in flavour, the fish is perfect for sashimi or for baking, grilling and hot or cold smoking.

The salmon are harvested 52 weeks of the year, processed quickly and can be transported to Australia within 60 hours of harvest.

Experts warn public sector fraud is much higher than estimated by UK’s National Fraud Authority (NFA) in its first annual fraud dictector.

NFA released its first fraud indicator last week, estimating fraud costing Britons £30bn ($A54.38bn) a year, 58%, or £17.6bn, of which was public sector fraud, but Jim Gee, a director of counter fraud services at chartered accountants MacIntyre Hudson and chair of the Centre for Counter Fraud Studies, put it much higher, at more than £27bn.

He told Public Finance, a UK publication for public sector managers, the MacIntyre Hudson estimate was based on an average 4.57% shortfall across all public sectors,

Gee, who is former chief executive of UK’s NHS Counter Fraud Service, noted the NFA’s estimates of the fraud costs were ‘puzzling’ and the losses for the health service, which the NFA estimated at £263m ‘extraordinary’.

He said the fraud calculated by the NFA in UK’s National Health Services (NHS) was only 0.27% of its budget compared with a global average of 5.59% for health care systems, according to recent findings by Macintyre Hudson.

‘I would be very interested in how that was calculated. If we assume the NHS is at the bottom of the global range of losses and as good as or better than any other country then it should still be losing £3.3bn,’ he said.

Gee said the average losses to frauds in the NHS until 2006 when he left was just exceeding 4%. The NHS has not published figures of fraud losses since the end of 2006.

The NFA said their new indicator was the most accurate and comprehensive yet, but admitted that it was ‘likely to underestimate the full financial impact of fraud’, particularly in the private sector because figures were not available for some industry areas or data only included reported losses.

‘As improvements are  made in the quality and availability of fraud loss estimates, it is likely that the overall fraud estimate will increase,’ Anne Jefferies, NFA head of measurements and analysis, said.

Andrew Davis, Experian head of public sector fraud, said fraud in local authorities was much more widespread than implied by the NFA indicator, which concentrated mainly on social housing tenancy and single person council tax discounts.

Further Reading:

Read the story in Public Finance

Discount supermarket Aldi was quick today to commend Coles for “finally taking the step towards providing greater price transparency for consumers” through a national pricing policy.

Coles is the last of the major supermarket chains (MSCs) to introduced a national pricing policy after Aldi introduced it in April 2008, followed by Woolworths last year.

Ian McLeod, Coles managing director, said today the retailer would introduce the new measure in response to customer feedback that charging different prices on the same grocery item was “unfair”.

“From February 1, Coles will apply its lowest prices to more than 8000 grocery products including meat, seafood, dairy, deli and bakery products across the country and the remaining grocery products will be matched to our lowest prices in each state,” he said.

For the about 17,000 remaining products, Coles pricing would be made uniform within states to reflect supply arrangements, which were often made with statewide rather than national suppliers, the company said.

Tom Daunt, manager director - buying Aldi Stores, said there was no reason why people should not have clear and transparent information to make informed buying decisions.

“The practice of inconsistent pricing has been in place in Australia for far too long and we believe this is unacceptable,” he said.

“Aldi was able to introduce national pricing after just a few short years and there is no reason why the other major supermarket chains can’t follow our lead.”

He cited the 2009 CHOICE supermarket survey which found Aldi was 25% cheaper than its closest priced competitors. “And that is in the current environment of inconsistent pricing,” he said.

“Once all the MSCs have rolled out national pricing, Australian consumers will be better able to see how they can get the best value for money.”

He said Aldi had led the industry in a number of initiatives such as unit pricing, which it introduced in November 2007 before legislation forced the MSCs only introduced it.

Further reading:

Read the story in The Australian