The trend of shoppers increasing their visits to local stores was promoted to millions of radio listeners when leading wholesalers Steve Fox and Steve Parfett were interviewed on key BBC radio programmes.

Makro has unveiled a multi-million pound customer investment programme which includes store revamps; installation of new, specialist equipment in store; creation of a new offer management department; the creation of a customer management department including expansion of its customer consultants team and more investment into targeting specific customer groups, following the success of its Love the Pub initiative.

Sales data for 400,000 independent retailers and caterers is now available for analysis by FMCG manufacturers, following a deal between Booker and SalesOut

William Reed Business Media, which includes ProWholesaler and The Grocer in the portfolio of titles it publishes, has reinforced its commitment to online publishing with the acquisition of Decision News Media.Decision News Media, based in Montpellier, France, has established a reputation for authoritative, in-depth and insightful news reporting of food, nutrition, cosmetics and pharmaceutical topics. Its flagship websites are FoodNavigator.com, NutraIngredients.com, In-PharmaTechnologist.com and CosmeticsDesign.com.

Pre-tax profits at Booker Group rose 30% to £47.2m on sales up 3.3% to £3.2bn for the year to March 27. Like-for-like sales to caterers and other non-retailers were up 7%, and sales to retailers were up 1%.

Jenks Sales Brokers entire workforce has been made redundant after it went into administration on Monday.

The FWD has announced that its director general John Murphy will retire at the end of this month, and will be succeeded by his deputy James Bielby, with the new title of chief executive.