4th April 2022
Bite-sized business news from the UK and beyond
Good morning Congratulations to the Oxford men and Cambridge women rowing teams who won their respective races yesterday. 2022's Boat Race marked the return of the event to the Thames in London for the first time since 2019 because of the pandemic.
Today's stories
- Cooking oil supplies run low
- Amazon workers vote for first labour union
FOOD
Cooking oil supplies run low
What’s going on?
Why is this important?
For the past few months, the supply of crude oil has made headlines but now oil of the cooking variety is taking the limelight.
Ukraine and Russia supply 80% of the world's sunflower supply, and the conflict has caused serious disruption to imports to the UK.
In response, manufacturers of foods that use the oil in production, are tweaking their recipes to make use of alternative ingredients. This means the taste of crisps, oven chips and biscuits could change.
Springtime is usually when Ukrainian sunflower farmers sow seeds for harvest in October and November. But the war means this schedule has been disordered which will have knock on impacts for months and even years to come.
Zooming out
Other stories to keep you in the loop
- Minister rules out energy rationing in UK despite Ukraine crisis
- P&O Ferries faces criminal probe over sackings
- EasyJet cancels hundreds of flights due to high levels of COVID-related absences
- Sberbank’s UK arm faces collapse amid Russia sanctions
- Chris Hemsworth's fitness app bought for $300m
- Lush pledges to invest in UK stores after return to profit
- London tech investor drops cofounder charged with assault
- Trump's Truth Social app branded a disaster
ONLINE
Amazon workers vote for first labour union
Stat of the day
The value of the UK video games market continued to grow in 2021, reaching a record high of £7.2bn
Interesting links from around the web
- 4 signs you may have a weak immune system—and what to do about it
- After over 20 years, scientists have finished mapping the human genome. What happens next?
- The workers losing their ambition
