The Clean Energy Finance Corporation has committed $50 million in Energy Efficiency Loans (EELs) to help businesses improve their energy productivity. [ + ]

Global Fresh Foods has sent its first commercial sea shipment of fresh fish to Tokyo from Chile using its fuel-cell based oxygen management system. The shipment will spend up to 33 days at sea before arriving in Japan. [ + ]

The AFGC has released the first Competitiveness and Sustainable Growth Report, which it says is the most detailed financial health check ever undertaken of Australia’s $110 billion food and grocery manufacturing sector. [ + ]

Despite a difficult past season, the Australian dairy industry can look forward to a more positive year ahead, according to Rabobank’s Dairy Quarterly report. [ + ]

Spring Gully Foods is back under family control after several months under the administration of Meertens. The company’s 300 creditors voted to accept a DoCA which will return them 100 cents in the dollar on outstanding debts. [ + ]

The UK food and drink industry’s careers campaign Taste Success has launched the MunchBot app, which aims to encourage young people to consider a career as an engineer in the industry. [ + ]

Nestlé has launched a youth employment initiative in Europe which will offer jobs and create thousands of apprenticeships and traineeships by 2016. [ + ]

The food industry needs to collaborate more to address sustainability challenges. This was one of the key messages of the European edition of the Sustainable Foods Summit. [ + ]

Tetra Pak says it plans to sign an agreement with Braskem, the largest thermoplastic resins producer in the Americas, for the supply of LDPE made from sugar cane to its packaging material factories in Brazil. [ + ]

North American crop production has fallen behind that of Western Europe, despite US farmers using genetically modified seed and more pesticide, University of Canterbury researchers have found. [ + ]

Sanitarium has defended its Up&Go liquid breakfast drink after consumer watchdog Choice called its ‘high in fibre’ claim into question in an article that critiqued the nutritional claims of liquid breakfasts. [ + ]

Children with autism have been found to have elevated antibodies to wheat gluten proteins compared to those without autism. However, the researchers did not find any connection between the elevated antibodies and coeliac disease. [ + ]

Looking to expand dietary options for coeliacs, Joyce Irene Boye and colleagues developed a new variety of glabrous (hairless) canary seeds, which have been bred specifically for human consumption. [ + ]

A dairy company was convicted and fined $35,000 following an incident in which a worker had a finger severed in a cheese shredding machine. [ + ]

An Ulladulla man has been fined for threatening a NSW Food Authority officer who was conducting an inspection of a food business selling seafood from a fishing vessel. [ + ]