Finance

Government plans to extend labeling requirements to community kitchens and processed products

Consumers should learn more about the origin of food. Health Minister Rudolf Anschober had a draft ordinance drawn up which provides for the labeling of the origin of products from cattle and eggs in communal kitchens. Canteens and kitchens in schools or old people's homes are affected.

Agriculture Minister Elisabeth Köstinger is of the opinion that the origin of fruit and vegetables can also be included in the regulation on communal kitchens. The draft from the Ministry of Health is an “important first step”, but it “does not go far enough”. The primary ingredients in processed foods such as ready-made meals should also be included in the regulation. There is currently an obligation to label the origin of fresh meat.

Köstinger referred to an opinion by the European law expert Walter Obwexer. According to this, a mandatory origin labeling is possible for processed products and in communal catering for beef and beef products, egg products as well as for fruit and vegetables.

For other product groups, the legal framework is narrower, according to the report. However, mandatory labeling is possible via notification to the EU Commission, taking quality aspects into account. The labeling of origin can be prescribed regardless of the application of the product (food processing, communal catering or gastronomy).

Readjusted

The draft of the Ministry of Health should be readjusted in the coming weeks. Köstinger is optimistic that Austria will “find its own way”. “We know that there are also hurdles under EU law and that it will not be easy to implement, especially because the European Union's primary ingredient regulation exists.”

The coalition agreement provides for mandatory labeling of the primary ingredients milk, meat and eggs in public and private communal catering. There could be EU legal problems with milk. The Ministry of Agriculture refers to countries such as France or Italy, where there is still a label indicating the origin of the milk.

The food industry has reservations. National labeling requirements would only affect domestic manufacturers. Animal welfare organizations speak of a “first step”.

More profit with slightly lower sales

Josef Pröll, head of Leipnik Lundenburger

At Leipnik-Lundenburger Invest Beteiligungs AG (LLI), despite the problems resulting from the Corona crisis, people are quite satisfied. “Fortunately, we were able to increase the result despite an extremely challenging year,” said LLI General Director Josef Pröll. “The decision to consciously address the end consumer with a brand strategy parallel to the so-called industrial flour for large bakeries and the food industry has paid off.”

In total, LLI sales fell by 3.8 percent to EUR 1.078.35 billion in the 2019/20 financial year. According to the company, earnings before taxes (EBT) increased by 29.7 percent to 48.28 million euros. There was a significant decrease in the cafe + co group due to the Corona closings. Sales fell by 12.3 percent to 209.9 million euros.

The total ground quantity fell slightly in the past financial year due to the lower demand in the large bakeries sector. However, this decline was more than compensated for by a massive increase in demand for branded and packet flour as well as for pasta. “With its two operational pillars, Mühlen and café + co, LLI is broadly positioned and thus sustainably crisis-resistant”, emphasized Pröll.

Investments are still being made in mills. The new mill in Krefeld should be completed as planned in the summer. With the new mill, the GoodMills Group wants to increase efficiency. The total grinding capacity is 408,000 tons per year.

An expansion and modernization project for the mill in Kutno is also starting in Poland, with an investment volume of 21 million euros. With 24 mills in seven countries, GoodMills are the largest European flour producer. A.AN.

The background could be a race for supremacy in fast Internet from space.

Photo montage: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos (right).

Space companies of the two richest men in the world are fighting over orbits for their Internet satellites. Tesla CEO Elon Musk's SpaceX company wants the US telecom regulator FCC to allow hundreds of satellites in its Starlink fleet to fly closer to Earth. The company Kuiper, which belongs to Jeff Bezos' online retailer Amazon and also wants to set up a network of satellites for Internet supply, is fighting against it.

Such disputes are usually fought without much public attention, but Musk addressed the conflict on Twitter on Tuesday. He argued that it would not be in the public interest to obstruct Starlink today, while Amazon's satellite system would “at best not be operational for a few years”. Amazon countered that the SpaceX plans would increase the risk of collisions in space and cripple competitors in the business. “It is clearly in SpaceX's interest to nip competition in the bud, but it is most definitely not in the public interest,” said a tweet from Amazon.

Internet from space

SpaceX plans to build a network of around 12,000 satellites around the world to provide Internet coverage. There are now more than 1,000 of them in space. You are traveling at an altitude of around 550 kilometers. SpaceX would now like to install a further 2,800 satellites, which are actually intended for an orbit that is twice as high, at this altitude. Lower orbits are beneficial: shorter path for the signal means more speed. That's why Amazon would also like to be active there. Amazon's company has so far received a fleet of 3,200 satellites from the FCC, but has not yet launched any.

Musk and Bezos are by far the richest people in the world right now – largely because of the value of the stakes in their companies. According to calculations by the financial service Bloomberg, Musk recently had assets of 210 billion dollars (173 billion euros), Bezos 194 billion dollars (160 billion euros).

Boyish dreams

Not least thanks to Musks and Bezos' fascination with space, space travel has increasingly become a playground for billionaires in recent years. SpaceX developed rockets with reusable fuel stages and a space capsule, which are now also used for flights to the International Space Station. But Musk is also known for his dream of colonizing Mars. Bezos is initially aiming for space excursions with his private company Blue Origin – but also speaks of the fact that mankind could shift dirty industries into space over time in order to protect the environment.

The current satellite projects are supposed to be a revolution for the global Internet supply: fast access, no matter where you are. SpaceX is currently marketing test access for $ 99 a month – plus $ 499 investment in a receiving system.

Building a network of thousands of satellites is an expensive endeavor. Kuiper, for example, spoke of investments in the order of ten billion dollars. Not all can shoulders – for example, the competitor OneWeb had to file for bankruptcy last year, and work is currently underway on a restart under new owners.

But for those who arrive in space, it could be a lucrative business: According to media reports, SpaceX reckons that the Internet satellites could bring in $ 30 billion annually.

Berlin / Vienna. Due to the still high number of infections and, above all, concerns about the more infectious British mutant of the coronavirus, most European countries are currently in a lockdown. A situation that also has an impact on economic development. The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) said on Wednesday that economic output in Austria's most important trading partner would drop by three percent in the first quarter. The German federal government has therefore reduced its expectation for the year as a whole from an increase of 4.4 percent to an increase of three percent.

“In the service sector in particular, added value is falling significantly and is far below that of last summer,” says DIW economic director Claus Michelsen. “We are currently assuming that the hard lockdown will be maintained until the end of February and then gradually lifted – and that is the optimistic scenario.” The economist emphasizes that the German economy has a “long and rocky road” before it could grow again. According to DIW, the situation for industrial companies is better than it was during the first lockdown in spring 2020. “So far, supply chains do not seem to be severely disrupted, and export demand has not collapsed.” However, the ongoing restrictions are likely to gradually affect industry. Since the substance of many companies has now deteriorated, the risk of a wave of bankruptcies is increasing – at least in the sectors particularly affected.

Austrian economic researchers have similar expectations for Austria. Here, too, it is above all the service sector (tourism) that is causing concern. Wifo is currently forecasting an increase of 2.5 percent for 2021. The latest forecast for the IHS is 3.1 percent, but the current lockdown is not yet included. This could reduce growth to around 1.7 percent, it said last.

A billion loss a week

The development is also easy to read from the National Bank's weekly economic indicator. Accordingly, the slump is currently half as strong as in spring 2020. Compared to the same period of the previous year, however, there is a decrease of eleven percent. According to the OeNB, this means a loss of added value of just under a billion euros per week. (Jaz / Reuters)

[R5B8I]

Melvin Capital was betting that the shares of video game retailer GameStop would decline. Thousands of young people want to prevent this and have been buying like crazy ever since.

An unbelievable duel has been going on on the US stock exchange for almost a week: A hedge fund with almost 12.5 billion US dollars in management capital against several thousand very young hobby investors who gather in an online forum. Both sides are fighting for the stock exchange price of the stumbling GameStop group. What may seem like an unequal duel has something of David versus Goliath: Because the major investor now has to worry about his billions.

What happened?

The well-known video game retailer GameStop is doing badly. The international chain with more than 5,000 shops and almost 50,000 employees specializes primarily in the purchase and sale of used video games, consoles and gaming accessories. That is why it has long suffered from the fact that customers nowadays more and more frequently make online purchases and simply download their games. The corona crisis with its worldwide lockdowns accelerated the negative development again.

Several large investors have therefore, so to speak, bet that the price of the GameStop share will fall even further in the next few weeks. This process is called shortselling: large investors discover stocks that they consider to be overvalued. With the help of short sales, they subsequently benefit from when their price actually falls. The US hedge fund Melvin Capital participated in the short-selling of GameStop shares to a particularly large extent.

GameStop is a very popular company, especially among young people (no similarly large retailer buys used gaming accessories). In addition, the Internet brings about very special phenomena, especially during the corona pandemic, when boredom occurs in lockdown. So it happened that in the course of the past week on the online portal reddit in a forum for young hobby speculators called r / wallstreetbets, several users called on to buy GameStop shares – to save the price of the ailing group and the major investors To bring losses.

Taken billions by 20-year-olds

That worked extremely well. Since mid-January, the share, which is on the downside, has jumped from 18 to more than 360 US dollars. This is a huge problem for Melvin Capital: As a result of this stock market duel, they lost almost three billion US dollars in less than two weeks.

The trend seems to be unstoppable: The young people see themselves strengthened by the rising share price and the associated reporting, more and more of them are raving about reddit to get tips, invest and then hold on to their securities.

GameStop will be happy: Your course continues to rise, so that on Tuesday evening even Tesla boss Elon Musk, who has recently become the richest man in the world, shared the link to r / wallstreetbets on Twitter, only intensifying the rush.

Gamestonk !! https://t.co/RZtkDzAewJ

– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 26, 2021

For young investors, it is now about more than just saving a company that is nostalgically valuable to them. The majority of the people who gather on reddit are well under thirty and speculate as a hobby, as a sideline. Now this online-savvy generation is feeling for the first time what power it can exert on the market if only enough of them gather behind something.

Playing with GameStop shares has become an act of rebellion against the Wall Street establishment for them. Their goal, as can be seen from several posts in the forum, is to drive Melvin Capital into ruin. If it succeeds, one can assume that it will not be the last attack on the stock market elite.

Following the animal protection referendum, Rudolf Anschober presented a draft ordinance for the mandatory labeling of food.

The animal protection referendum received more than 400,000 signatures last week. Among other things, it called for mandatory food labeling. Health Minister Rudolf Anschober has now presented a draft ordinance.

In the future, food in canteens, schools and hospitals will be labeled with reference to their origin, but for the time being this is only intended for beef and eggs. Catering companies are also affected, the catering industry is excluded for the time being, reports “krone.at”.

According to the Ministry of Health, the regulation should be binding for all companies “in which food is prepared for direct consumption by the end consumer as part of a commercial activity”. That would also affect restaurants.

However, the press spokesman for the Minister of Agriculture, Daniel Kosak, told “krone.at” that no binding origin labeling is provided for inns. He referred to the government program in which “greater dissemination of the designation of origin” in the catering industry should take place on a voluntary basis.

Also the chairman of the restaurateurs in the Chamber of Commerce, Mario Pulker, sees the compulsory labeling in the catering trade as “an absolute no-go”, as he emphasized in the “Standard”.

The final prescription has not yet been finalized. Country origin labeling is currently only possible for foods where the EU-wide Food Information Regulation and Primary Ingredient Regulation do not apply, as explained in a legal opinion by Innsbruck European law expert Walter Obwexe. These include beef, eggs, and fruits and vegetables.

The planned labeling should provide consumers with better decision-making support and the opportunity to select regional products, according to Anschober. This is also intended to promote domestic agriculture.

The spokesman for the animal protection referendum, Sebastian Bohrn Mena, welcomes the initiative: “Especially now, when so much tax money is in motion, it should also be used to promote animal welfare, nature conservation and the safeguarding of our local, small-scale agriculture.”

The strong demand for games and puzzles during the Corona crisis gave Ravensburger Spiele a growth surge of 20% last year.

Just a few weeks after the outbreak of the pandemic and the associated lockdown, game manufacturers have increasingly reported record sales. (More here >>) In particular, puzzles and board games were rediscovered as hobbies for many people.

Ravensburger is now also reporting a surge in growth in 2020. According to “orf.at”, this gave the company the strong demand for games and puzzles. Compared to 2019, sales increased by 20 percent in 2020 and thus increased to 632 million euros, the company continues to report. CEO Clemens Maier said the year of the crisis was a good one.

In the past year alone, 28 million Ravensburger puzzles were sold. That is around 32 percent more than the year before. As Maier explained, the pandemic triggered a little “hype” about the rather “quiet hobby”. But not only the pandemic is responsible for the puzzle boom, the trend towards puzzles was also noticeable before the corona crisis. It was even produced up to capacity.

In addition to the puzzles, there was also increased interest in board games, especially classics were in demand. According to the company, 25 million Ravensburger games have been sold worldwide.

US aircraft manufacturer with huge provisions for delivery problems at 777X.

The US aircraft manufacturer Boeing suffered a massive loss in the billions last year. As the company announced on Wednesday, the minus in 2020 totaled 11.9 billion dollars (9.8 billion euros).

In the fourth quarter alone, the loss was $ 8.4 billion. The main reason for this is a provision of 6.5 billion dollars for delivery delays on the long-haul 777X.

The delivery of the new type had been postponed several times. Boeing has now announced that the 777X will not be ready to go before the end of 2023. The last date was 2022.

The aircraft manufacturer is particularly ailing because of the drastic restrictions in travel due to the corona pandemic and because of the temporary flight ban on the Boeing 737 MAX after two crashes with several hundred fatalities.

The European aviation safety authority EASA lifted the ban on Wednesday, the US aviation authority FAA had already given the green light for the 737 MAX in mid-November after Boeing had made a number of technical changes.

2020 was a “year of profound social and global” cuts that have “severely restricted” the industry, said Boeing CEO David Calhoun. The corona crisis and the failure of the 737 MAX would have had a major impact on the Group's results. The Boeing shares fell in the pre-market trading by 3.2 percent.

In the future, large kitchens will have to tell their guests where the beef and eggs they are cooking come from. This is provided for in a draft ordinance by the Ministry of Health. The planned labeling requirement for processed products is missing – for the time being.

Vienna. The Green Ministry of Health is presenting the first draft for a mandatory declaration of origin for food. In public and private canteens (or, depending on the reading, even in pubs) it should be clear in future where the primary ingredients beef and eggs come from. Too little, criticize the Austrian farmers and the coalition partner ÖVP – the regulation falls short.

After all, in its government program, Türkis-Grün agreed on a mandatory declaration of origin for milk, meat and eggs in canteens and processed foods from 2021. There is nothing to be read about this in the current draft. One reason for this are restrictions under European law, as the government was also confirmed by an opinion by European law expert Walter Obwexer.

Legal options not exhausted

The primary ingredient regulation of the EU only allows national markings of origin for certain products, according to his judgment. But the possibilities have not yet been exhausted. “Austria has its limits, but there are possibilities,” said Obwexer. Countries could enforce a mandatory declaration of origin for beef, eggs, fruit and vegetables.

“I expect an implementation for processed products as well,” urges Agriculture Minister Elisabeth Köstinger (ÖVP) to the Ministry of Health. There it was only said on Wednesday that the draft regulation was “still in vote”. Only when these talks are over will the planned regulation be sent to Brussels. (except)

Fierce competition in the US television and video market.

The US telecom group AT&T made a billion-dollar loss in the fourth quarter because of tough competition on the US television and video market. Because the group reorganized its video business into its own division and assesses the chances in the home market significantly worse, AT&T had to make 15.5 billion dollars (12.8 billion euros) in value adjustments in this segment alone, as the company did in Dallas on Wednesday ( State of Texas) announced.

The bottom line was a net loss of $ 13.9 billion in the fourth quarter, compared to a profit of $ 2.4 billion in the same quarter last year.

In day-to-day business, however, things went a little better than expected. In the fourth quarter, the profit attributable to one share, adjusted for one-off effects, fell by 14 cents to 75 cents and sales fell by 2.4 percent to 45.7 billion US dollars. However, both values were above analyst expectations.

AT&T is now cautiously optimistic about 2021. In the current year, adjusted earnings per share should be around the previous year's level. The board of directors also wants to increase revenues by a good one percent.

The corona pandemic was largely responsible for the decline in operational business. For example, the revenues from the TV and cinema business as well as the mobile communications revenues have declined due to the lower travel activities of AT&T customers. Share of sales in Latin America was particularly strong.