Bucket shop snaps up rival

ONLINE bucket shop lastminute.com has taken another step towards producing a profit by snapping up a rival dotcom. The group has agreed to pay £9m for Travelselect.com, an online travel and leisure firm, in an all-share deal. Lastminute, which said in February it was on track to generate a UK profit by June, said the deal would make an instant contribution to operating cashflow. Chairman Allan Leighton said: "This is lastminute.com's first acquisition of scale in the UK. The travel volume and expertise of Travelselect.com will further enhance the delivery of our key metrics."

SECURE EVENT: Business Internet service provider Onyx Internet is to launch a package of services to help safeguard the region's business community from online threats to their business activities. The new range of Connected & Protected services will be launched at the Centre For Life, in Newcastle, between noon and 2pm on Tuesday, April 16. To find out more about the event, contact Andrea Horton on (01642) 216200 or visit www.onyx.net

MILK CONTRACT: Robert Wiseman Dairies has landed a deal with supermarket chain J Sainsbury. The Glasgow milk group has won a contract to supply Sainsbury's stores in the North of England and the Midlands following a three-month trial with the supermarket chain. The contract, which gets under way later this month, represents about ten per cent of all the grocer's total fresh milk requirements.

COMPUTER DEAL: Sunder-land Housing Group, which took over the city council's 36,000 properties in Britain's largest transfer of its kind, has appointed computer firm Orchard Information Systems to replace its customer and business systems. The £1.8m investment will see Orchard provide products from its range of customer facing systems, handling rents, lettings, repairs, modernisation of homes, estate management services and financial management.

KRUSH complete: Polar Krush frozen drink producer NICC has completed a £1m investment in its facility at Ashington, in Northumberland.