Japan's $1.7 Trillion Fund Boosts ESG Holdings as Others Flee
GPIF held about ¥18.2 trillion ($126 billion) of assets tracking environmental, social and governance indexes at the end of March — or 14.7% of the fund's equity investments — up from ¥17.8 trillion a year earlier, according to documents published Friday. The fund posted a quarterly loss on a declining dollar and weaker domestic assets.
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Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Canada's Couche-Tard resumes share buyback after scrapping Seven & I acquisition bid
(Reuters) -Canada's Alimentation Couche-Tard on Monday said it was resuming its share repurchase program days after the Circle K-parent scrapped its $46-billion attempt to buy Japan's Seven & I. The company said it would repurchase up to 77.1 million shares worth about $4.2 billion as it works to shore up shareholder value after the months-long effort to buy the Japan-based convenience store chain fell apart. Couche-Tard, which has a market capitalization of about $15.95 billion, had said last week that it was scrapping its bid for Seven & I as the Japanese retailer refused to engage constructively on the deal. If it had been successful, it would have been Japan's largest-ever foreign buyout. Couch-Tard's stock closed up 8.3% on July 17 when it scrapped the deal for Seven & I. The stock is down about 5% so far this year. The authorized share buyback program will begin July 23, and continue through July 22, 2026, Couche-Tard said.
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Frozen Food Market Size to Hit Valuation of US$ 722.50 Billion by 2033
Accelerating urban lifestyles, globalized tastes, advanced cold-chain technology, e-commerce convenience, health-oriented reformulations, stringent sustainability metrics, rising emerging-market penetration, and agile competition are reshaping the frozen food market, positioning freezers as primary, premium meal solutions worldwide. Chicago , July 21, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global frozen food market was valued at US$ 450.1 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach US$ 722.5 billion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 5.4% during the forecast period. The steady erosion of discretionary cooking time is the single most reliable predictor of frozen food market growth in North America, Western Europe, and urban Asia. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics clocked average weekday meal-prep at just 52 minutes in 2023, down from 75 minutes only eleven years earlier. Similar time-compression is reported by Japan's NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute, which found that dual-income households now complete weeknight dinners in roughly 35 active minutes. As commutes return, Gen Z and millennial professionals repeatedly cite 'no-mess cooking' as their top weekday priority, steering them toward frozen skillets, breakfast sandwiches, and smoothie kits that jump from freezer to plate in under ten minutes. Brands such as Conagra's Healthy Choice Max and Nestlé's Lean Cuisine Balance have capitalized by launching single-serve entrées calibrated to 450-calorie targets and 25-gram protein thresholds—claims verified through NSF International testing and prominently displayed on pack fronts. Request Free Executive Sumnmary: Importantly, convenience does not stop at preparation speed. Most new launches now feature resealable film tops and microwave-crisping sleeves engineered by AptarGroup to keep breading crunchy without switching appliances. On-pack dynamic QR codes link to 90-second instructional reels, eliminating any cooking uncertainty. The effect is visible on retail scanner data: IRI's 2024 read shows frozen bowls ringing up 362 million individual units at U.S. mass retailers, surpassing the combined unit sales of ambient boxed dinners and shelf-stable rice pouches. Time-starved consumers are voting with their wallets, signaling that the freezer is no longer a last-minute backup but a primary weeknight solution. Key Findings in Frozen Food Market Market Forecast (2033) US$ 722.5 billion CAGR 5.4% Top Drivers Expanded cold-chain capacity enabling faster replenishment and broader geographic reach. Retail private-label proliferation boosting shelf-space allocation for value frozen offerings. Foodservice volume contracts stabilizing year-round demand for standardized frozen ingredients. Top Trends Expanded cold-chain capacity enabling faster replenishment and broader geographic reach. Retail private-label proliferation boosting shelf-space allocation for value frozen offerings. Foodservice volume contracts stabilizing year-round demand for standardized frozen ingredients. Top Challenges Expanded cold-chain capacity enabling faster replenishment and broader geographic reach. Retail private-label proliferation boosting shelf-space allocation for value frozen offerings. Foodservice volume contracts stabilizing year-round demand for standardized frozen ingredients. Frozen Aisles Showcase Global Dishes Mirroring Post-Pandemic Travel-Inspired Palates Worldwide Pent-up wanderlust has found an unexpected outlet in the frozen food market. As international travel rebounded in 2022–2023, shoppers returned with broadened taste expectations, and manufacturers responded with an unprecedented wave of globally inspired SKUs. Data partner SPINS recorded more than 640 distinct frozen entrées featuring regional callouts—ranging from Korean bulgogi to Moroccan tagine—introduced across U.S. natural and conventional channels in the twelve months ending February 2024. Importers such as Ajinomoto Foods North America and JBS-owned Seara launched lines prepared in USDA-inspected facilities using authentic marinades flown in from origin countries, ensuring flavor fidelity while meeting domestic safety codes. Retailers in the frozen food market are dedicating end-caps to these offerings to encourage trial. Kroger's 'Taste of the World' freezer sets rotate every eight weeks and drove an incremental 14,000 facing placements for ethnic frozen entrées during their pilot period, according to proprietary Kroger Precision Marketing data. Beyond entrées, dessert makers are embracing the same ethos—Witness Magnolia's ube purple-yam ice cream bars, moving 1.7 million bars through U.S. club stores since launch. The trend is equally pronounced in Europe, where Iceland Foods' 'Mexican Nights' range sold out within three days of debut. By integrating storytelling on-pack—complete with sourcing maps and chef partnerships—brands satisfy both curiosity and credibility, turning the freezer into a culinary passport that fits a Tuesday budget. Cold-Chain Technology Innovations Ensure Quality From Factory Conveyor To Fork What once happened behind supermarket loading docks is now a centerpiece of competitive advantage in the frozen food market: the cold-chain. Ultra-low-carbon trans-critical CO₂ refrigeration systems, installed in over 5,600 European stores by 2024, cut energy draw by up to 14 megawatt-hours annually per location compared with legacy hydrofluorocarbon setups. Logistics firms are layering Internet-of-Things telemetry onto these systems; Maersk's Captain Peter platform captures real-time container temperature every 15 minutes, issuing instant alerts if shrimp dumplings or cauliflower crusts drift just 0.5 °C outside tolerance bands. Quality preservation is equally rigorous on land in the frozen food market. In 2023, Walmart finished rolling out its 116-site High-Velocity Distribution model, where pallets are cross-docked into regionally optimized trucks within an average 27-minute dwell time—half the previous interval. This tighter cadence slashes frost crystals that compromise texture, allowing premium croissants and vegan nuggets to hold artisan integrity even after 1,300-mile hauls. Meanwhile, autonomous mobile robots from Seegrid now ferry frozen pallets inside warehouses at line speeds exceeding 5.5 feet per second, compensating for chronic labor shortages without sacrificing HACCP compliance. These combined technical strides reinforce the category's ability to promise 'chef-quality taste straight from the freezer,' a claim that resonates with consumers wary of flavor trade-offs. Digital Grocery Platforms Reshape Visibility, Pricing, And On-Demand Fulfillment Expectations E-commerce's share of frozen food market transactions may be small in absolute unit terms—IRI clocks it at 397 million picks in 2023—but its influence on merchandising strategy is outsized. Algorithms on Instacart, Amazon Fresh, and rank frozen items based on heat-indexed substitution risk, basket size lift, and fulfilment dwell time, reshuffling digital shelves weekly. Brands fine-tune tile images accordingly: alpha-numerically shorter names, proven by A/B tests from Profitero, index 12 positions higher on average search returns than longer descriptors. Quick-commerce operators magnify the impact. Gopuff, which locates 10,000-square-foot micro-fulfilment centers within three miles of 35 million U.S. households, delivers ice-cream pints in 16 minutes median. Such speed reframes frozen indulgence as an impulse treat rather than a planned stock-up, encouraging premium price-points. Retailers are also leveraging geofenced coupons so that consumers passing a Target location receive in-app 2-for-5 prompts for frozen dumpling brands stocked specifically in that store. On the back end, Shopify and BigCommerce APIs feed near-real-time inventory to Google Merchant Center, ensuring out-of-stock items are quietly de-indexed to avoid shopper frustration that would tarnish algorithmic quality scores. The net result is a shopper journey where discovery, evaluation, and delivery occur in under an hour—a paradigm that frozen food, with its shelf-life cushion, is uniquely positioned to dominate. Health-Conscious Shoppers Trigger Nutrient-Dense, Plant-Forward Evolution In Modern Freezers Globally The narrative that frozen equals preservative-laden is being dismantled by data-backed reformulation in the frozen food market. In 2024, Mintel tracked 1,180 global frozen launches labeled 'high protein,' 'keto,' or 'whole grain,' each supported by laboratory assays rather than marketing puffery. MorningStar Farms' Incogmeato chik'n tenders now achieve a 23-gram protein delivery through mycoprotein fermentation, bypassing textured soy's allergen baggage. Sweet Earth's frozen burritos feature 6 grams of dietary fiber derived from inulin-fortified tortillas, verified via AOAC Method 991.43. These quantitative improvements allow brands to align with American Heart Association sodium caps set at 1,300 milligrams per entrée without compromising satiety. Dietary tribes are simultaneously accommodated in the frozen food market. Gluten-free demand continues to rise; Udi's sells 5.4 million frozen pizza crusts annually through U.S. retail, up from 3.1 million units in 2021. Low-FODMAP mapping, already adopted by Australia's Monash University certification program, now appears on Feel Good Foods' potstickers, easing IBS sufferers' path to variety. Meanwhile, regenerative-ag source stories bolster the trust factor: Caulipower specifies cauliflower acreage contracted from Iowa growers practicing cover-cropping, and this traceability earns the brand an average 4.8-star rating on Thrive Market reviews. Together, these product upgrades support a thesis that nutritional density and clean labels are no longer contrary to freezer convenience but integral to its next growth curve. Emerging Economies Expand Frozen Food Adoption Amid Urbanization And Infrastructure Urban migration is rewriting food storage norms in India, Brazil, and Southeast Asia, where domestic freezer penetration hit 44 million additional households between 2020 and 2023, according to Euromonitor appliance shipment data. In India's Tier-I cities, Reliance Retail's Smart Bazaar chain installed 3,600 extra freezer doors in fiscal 2024 alone, allocating half the capacity to regional favorites such as aloo-tikki patties and paratha stacks that previously required labor-intensive home preparation. Infrastructure investment is underpinning the trend in the frozen food market. Indonesia commissioned 31 public cold-storage hubs along its Java and Sumatra corridors, each capable of holding 2,400 metric tons at ‑18 °C. The hubs feed a blossoming quick-service restaurant sector that depends on fail-safe supply of frozen fries and poultry. Local producers are rising to the occasion: BRF's Sadia plant in Abu Dhabi now dedicates a 100-container monthly export quota to West African ports where consistent electricity remains scarce, ensuring product integrity despite port dwell delays. These developments mirror smartphone adoption curves; once hardware—freezers and cold warehouses—becomes accessible, usage behaviors accelerate non-linearly. Consequently, global brands from McCain to Green Giant are tweaking SKUs for spice palettes and portion sizes specific to these high-growth geographies, positioning themselves to capture the freezer's next billion servings. Need a Customized Version? Request It Now: Competitive Landscape Blends Legacy Brands, Venture-Backed Startups, And Strategic Partnerships The modern frozen food market is a chessboard in the frozen food market where century-old incumbents share squares with digitally native upstarts. Conagra, General Mills, and Kraft Heinz still command multibillion-unit sell-through volumes, yet venture-funded entrants like Daily Harvest, Tattooed Chef, and Snow Days added a collective 58 million units to U.S. scanner tallies in 2023. These challengers differentiate with direct-to-consumer logistics, delivering dry-ice packed assortments that bypass planogram constraints. Mergers and joint ventures are blurring boundaries. In December 2023, Nestlé and Deliveroo inked a five-year agreement to stock 76 Deliveroo Hop dark stores with Nestlé-branded frozen pizzas and plant-based proteins, granting Nestlé near-instant access to 23 million European app users. Private-label momentum cannot be ignored either; Aldi's Fremont Fish Market sold 120 million frozen shrimp rings during the most recent holiday quarter, demonstrating that store brands can sustain premium volumes when quality parity is achieved. Meanwhile, ingredient suppliers are arming all players with faster iteration cycles—Givaudan's AI-driven Recipe Recommender trims flavor development to eight weeks, letting both giants and garage startups launch seasonal limited editions in step with viral TikTok trends. In this highly fluid ecosystem, strategic agility rather than legacy scale determines who claims the prime real estate in consumers' freezers. Global Frozen Food Market Major Players: Ajinomoto Co., Inc. Associated British Foods PLC CJ Foods ConAgra Brands, Inc. General Mills Inc. Grupo Bimbo S.A.B. De C.V Grupo Bimbo Kellogg Company Lantmannen Unibake International Maruha Nichiro Holding Inc. Mccain Foods Limited Nestle SA NH Foods Ltd. Nichirei Corporation Nippon Suisan The Kraft Heinz Company Tyson Foods, Inc. Unilever Other Prominent Players Market Segmentation: By Product Type Fruits Seasonal Regular Vegetables Peas Corn Potatoes Others Dairy Products Milk Butter Cheese Others Meat & Poultry Red Meat Pork Meat Poultry Meat Seafood Bakery Products Bread Pizza Crust Cakes & Pastries Others Soups Ready Meals Dumplings Rice-based Italian (Pastas) Indian Korean Chinese Others Others By Distribution Channel Retail Online Supermarket/ Hypermarket Convenience Stores/ Standalone Stores Enterprise Sale (B2B) HoReCa (Hotel, Restaurants, Café) – Food Service Travel (Railway/ Airline/ Others) Educational Institutes Food Processing Industry By Region North America Europe Asia Pacific The Middle East and Africa South America Need Strategic Clarity? Talk to Our Analyst Today: About Astute Analytica Astute Analytica is a global market research and advisory firm providing data-driven insights across industries such as technology, healthcare, chemicals, semiconductors, FMCG, and more. We publish multiple reports daily, equipping businesses with the intelligence they need to navigate market trends, emerging opportunities, competitive landscapes, and technological advancements. With a team of experienced business analysts, economists, and industry experts, we deliver accurate, in-depth, and actionable research tailored to meet the strategic needs of our clients. At Astute Analytica, our clients come first, and we are committed to delivering cost-effective, high-value research solutions that drive success in an evolving marketplace. Contact Us:Astute AnalyticaPhone: +1-888 429 6757 (US Toll Free); +91-0120- 4483891 (Rest of the World)For Sales Enquiries: sales@ Follow us on: LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube CONTACT: Contact Us: Astute Analytica Phone: +1-888 429 6757 (US Toll Free); +91-0120- 4483891 (Rest of the World) For Sales Enquiries: sales@ Website:
TechCrunch
18 minutes ago
- TechCrunch
Indian crypto exchange CoinDCX confirms $44 million stolen during hack
India's largest crypto exchange CoinDCX has confirmed that one of its internal operational accounts was compromised in a recent security breach, allowing the hackers to make off with millions in crypto. On Saturday, CoinDCX co-founder and CEO Sumit Gupta disclosed in a post on X that an internal account 'used only for liquidity provisioning on a partner exchange' was compromised during the hack. The executive assured that the incident did not affect customer funds and that all its customer assets remain secure. Earlier in the day, crypto security researcher ZachXBT reported that around $44.2 million was drained from CoinDCX's coffers due to the incident. 'The attacker address was funded with 1ETH [Ethereum] Tornado Cash and later bridged a portion of the stolen funds from Solana to Ethereum,' the researcher posted on their Telegram channel. CoinDCX confirmed the loss amount to TechCrunch, stating that the funds were routed through Solana-Ethereum bridges and consolidated into 4,443 Ethereum and 155,830 Solana, which currently remain dormant. The crypto exchange also noted that it is working with India's Computer Emergency Response Team, CERT-In, and partner exchanges to investigate the matter. The Indian crypto exchange, registered with the government's Financial Intelligence Unit, boasts over 16 million users and offers access to more than 500 crypto assets. 'The incident was quickly contained by isolating the affected operational account,' said Gupta in an X post. 'Since our operational accounts are segregated from customer wallets, the exposure is only limited to this specific account and is being fully absorbed by us — from our own treasury reserves.' Techcrunch event Tech and VC heavyweights join the Disrupt 2025 agenda Netflix, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital — just a few of the heavy hitters joining the Disrupt 2025 agenda. They're here to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don't miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch Disrupt, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech — grab your ticket now and save up to $675 before prices rise. Tech and VC heavyweights join the Disrupt 2025 agenda Netflix, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital — just a few of the heavy hitters joining the Disrupt 2025 agenda. They're here to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don't miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch Disrupt, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech — grab your ticket now and save up to $675 before prices rise. San Francisco | REGISTER NOW Gupta noted that the company was working with the exchange partner to block and recover assets. 'I understand incidents like this can be unsettling — even when customer assets are unaffected,' he said. The exchange also launched a 'recovery bounty' program on Monday to award up to 25% of any recovered funds to anyone who can help trace and retrieve the stolen crypto. 'More than recovering the stolen funds, what is important for us is to identify and catch the attackers, because such things shouldn't happen again, not with us, not with anyone in the industry,' said Gupta. News of the breach comes almost exactly a year since the massive breach at Indian crypto exchange giant WazirX, which resulted in the loss of $230 million — nearly half its reserves. The exchange halted trading after the loss. It remains unclear, however, whether there are any connections between the two incidents.
