Are limes leaving a bitter taste in your mouth? Find out why…

*We never claimed to be experts of all-things green, but we can tell you a thing or two about supplies…

The past seven days has delivered bad news for Tequila fans… Beats headphones were banned from World Cup, and adidas have been eyeing-up sustainable solutions. It’s all going-off…

Here’s the news in-brief:

Supply Chain Prices

· Heavy rains and a poor winter crop has caused a spike in the price of Mexican limes, quadrupling since the beginning of the year

· Mexico exports 467,000 tons of lemons and limes each year globally and these prices will affect the USA in particular

· It’s also bad news around the rest of the world for anyone who drinks tequila or Corona…

Read more at Spend Matters

Sustainability (Germany)

· The adidas Group announced a strategic partnership with bluesign technologies to drive sustainable solutions in their supply chain

· The partnership will include environmental auditing on chemical management processes, as well as provision of information on the use of sustainable materials in manufacturing

Read more at Sustainable Brands

Ethics (UK)

· The UK government has been called upon to create a program reinforcing the requirement for ethical standards in public service contracting

· The Committee on Standards in Public Life also called upon government departments to consider ethics as a “professional commercial capability requirement” in all contracts

Technology (UK)

· Procurement professionals should fully embrace new technology as part of the transformation from a transactional to strategic function

· ‘The Buying Game’ roundtable in Manchester said that there needed to be a shift in culture in order for professionals to get full benefit from the technology

Read more at Supply Management

Consumer News

· The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has won a court case against Australian supermarket Coles

· Coles’ claim that all their bread was baked fresh in store daily, was successfully challenged as some of their par-baked products were actually produced off-site

Read more at ABC News 

Technology (USA)

· Tesla Motors CEO, Elon Musk, has written an open blog to all companies allowing them to use the company’s patents in their own products

· Musk believes that by sharing the technologies it will drive more companies to produce electric cars to the benefit of the environment

Read more at Supply Chain 24/7

Brand Marketing

· FIFA have banned Beats headphones from inside stadiums at the Football World Cup in Brazil

· Beats, owned by Apple, are popular with public and athletes alike, but as Sony are a partner sponsor of the tournament, the move has been made to protect their market

Read more at CNet

World-class Procurement (Canada)

· Kurt Albertson of The Hackett Group has highlighted how organisations should be focusing on innovation to grow their revenue

· However, an issue cited was how innovation is being defined, with a number of different definitions offered by CPOs

Read more at Purchasing B2B

Child Labour

·  As World Day against Child Labour (12th June) was marked, Human Rights Watch challenged companies to prevent child labour throughout their supply chains

· Throughout the world, there are still organisations conducting business with companies using child labour either knowingly or through not asking questions of their own suppliers

Read more at Huffington Post 

E-Invoicing

· Billentis has released its 2014 e-invoicing report

· The full report is available on the Billentis website and covers, amongst other things, China’s attempts to use e-invoicing to combat tax evasion