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THE INTERNATIONAL chocolate industry has been making all the right noises about practising due diligence over supply chains, so that brands ensure their cocoa is grown and processed responsibly – environmentally and socially. But doubts persist among NGOs that enough checks are made by companies and supplier country partners (including governments) and when wrongdoing is discovered it is contested effectively, in the confectionery and other sectors.…

The fact that auditors are struggling to conduct due diligence at companies during the Covid-19 crisis, given a lack of access to documents, offices and staff, is highlighting a key debate that was launched before the pandemic hit – just what standard auditors should target when seeking to prove accounts do not hide wrong-doing or crime.…

While the Canadian chocolate market is dominated by major manufacturers, such as Nestlé, Hershey, Mondelēz, Lindt, Mars and Ferrero – a diverse artisanal sector is growing towards commercial maturity, as consumers seek out premium products that are locally produced and often marketed to specific target customers.…

There is, however, much less protection in Latin America. In Brazil, the country’s justice and public security minister Sérgio Moro left the job in April accusing President Jair Bolsonaro of interference with federal police work. By doing so, he effectively became a whistleblower himself, but his suggestions on the topic are far from being the law of the land.…

IF there was a sub-Saharan African country expected to steer a middle course between World Health Organisation (WHO) demands on smoking and protecting a stable and prosperous tobacco industry and market, it would surely be relatively wealthy Botswana – with an average per capital income in 2018 USD7,750.…

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) and its member states are loosening their subsidy rules and reviewing environmental controls as they consider how to help Europe’s automobile sector recover from the beating delivered by the Covid-19 pandemic. With EU passenger car sales tumbling 76.3% year-on-year in April (these figures exclude Britain, with a 97% fall), EU automobile industry association ACEA, parts association CLEPA, repairers and dealers’ federation CECRA and tire makers organisation ETRMA have called on the EU to “consider temporary flexibilities in competition rules” restricting takeovers and subsidies.…

After 10 years of research, researchers at the Ångström Laboratory at Uppsala University in Sweden, working with Sweden-based paper packaging manufacturer BillerudKorsnäs, are close to the commercial development of a bio-based paper battery which would serve as a small energy source on paper packages.…

Metal packaging companies are innovating to make the most of the Covid-19 crisis, as competition intensifies from their rivals in the plastics packaging sector, with consumers seeking protection from the disease buying more wrapped food and more single-use plastics containers being sold and discarded.…

In the seven years since the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that Tokyo would be the host city of the summer Olympic Games and the Paralympics in the summer of 2020, companies in the paint and coatings sector have enjoyed a steady uptick in demand for products linked to the construction of venues and facilities for the Games, as well as for connected infrastructure, such as new hotels and transport facilities. …

QUANTUM computers are now being developed that may offer accounting practices computing power to strengthen audits, but which also pose some serious cybersecurity concerns.

After decades of theorising, quantum computing is here. Google last October (2019) announced it had developed a device which it claimed took 200 seconds to sample data showing how a quantum computer works one million times (1), a task it claimed would take a standard digital super-computer 10,000 years.…