In Short

A round-up of other business stories in brief...

Kerry opens Wisconsin centre

Ingredients, flavours and consumer food group Kerry yesterday opened its new $50 million (€35.5 million) innovation centre in Wisconsin. It is intended the centre will be used to “spearhead” product commercialisation.

The “Kerry Centre” will enable the group to meet the needs of food and beverage processors and providers in the US market, and will allow for “scalable growth” of Kerry’s ingredients and flavours business model, said chief executive Stan McCarthy.

'Sun' editor to head Murdoch firm

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation yesterday named Rebekah Wade, editor of British tabloid the Sun, as chief executive of its British newspaper arm News International from September 1st.

News Corp said Wade would continue to report to James Murdoch, News Corp’s chairman and chief executive Europe and Asia, who will also become executive chairman of News International from the same date. Wade (41) has edited The Sun for more than six years. – (Reuters)

Revenues at Veris grow by 29%

Revenues at Veris grew 29 per cent to €84.3 million in 2008, the support services provider said yesterday. This was driven by organic growth within the company’s facility and property-management division, combined with the impact of the acquisition of UK facilities management group Orange in late 2007.

However, the company generated a pretax loss of €6 million last year due to the adverse performance of its moving and storage division.

Veris sold this division to Capstar for €74,000 in March.

Glencar completes option agreement

AIM- and IEX-listed gold exploration company Glencar Mining has completed an option agreement with Perth-based exploration company Adamus Resources, relating to the Asheba Project in Ghana.

Glencar, which has been carrying out exploration on the Asheba licence since the mid-1990s, felt that significant additional drilling would be necessary in order to demonstrate its full potential and so decided to seek a partner for the licence.

Under the agreement, Adamus will have the right – after a six-month review period – to acquire a 70 per cent interest in the licence. After a further two years it will have the option to acquire the remaining 30 per cent of the licence.