LONDON, Oct 5 (Reuters) – TUI Travel (TT.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Europe’s largest travel company, said holiday bookings for winter and next summer were encouraging, as it picked up customers following the collapse of several smaller operators.

TUI Travel, controlled by Germany’s TUI AG (TUIGn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), also said net debt should fall more than it previously expected.

TUI Travel Chief Executive Peter Long said holidaymakers were seeking the security of a major tour operator after the failure of a number of smaller operators and airlines earlier this year. “We have benefited from this flight to quality,” Long said.

British travel companies that have collapsed, leaving thousands of passengers stranded, include Kiss Flights, Goldtrail and Sun4U.

TUI Travel said winter sales in the UK were up 17 percent compared with the previous year, while summer 2011 booking volumes were up 5 pct in the UK and up 18 pct in the Nordic region, the two markets it currently has on sale.

The company said its summer 2010 programme, which runs to the end of October, was almost fully sold after a surge in late bookings.

Also on Tuesday, Dart Group (DTG.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the owner of British low-cost airline Jet2.com, said its first-half profit would be ahead of last year, helped by a strong performance at its holidays company, Jet2holidays.com.

By Victoria Bryan (Reuters) – Dining in a completely dark room, unaware what’s on your plate while sitting next to a complete stranger may not sound like an ideal restaurant experience but it’s certainly an intriguing way to spend a rainy night in London.

Dans le Noir?, close to London’s City financial district, is staffed by blind waiters and waitresses who become your eyes according to the restaurant, whose original Paris branch opened in 2004.

In the lit bar, you choose whether you want the fish, meat or vegetable menu but the dishes themselves remain a secret, as do the ingredients of the “surprise” cocktails.

Bags, coats and devices that light up, including watches and mobile phones, are stowed away in lockers, making no distracting texts or emails one of the perks in this restaurant.

Placing your hand on the shoulder of your guide, you are led to a table in a pitch-black dining room that seats up to 60 people. And it is dark. Darkness of a kind you never get to see in a modern world of light pollution.

Only once did we glimpse a square of faint light from a doorway and there were certainly no candles on the cake for a birthday at a table somewhere off in the inky blackness.

The waiters tell you when the food is being placed down in front of you, then the fun begins of first, trying to get food in your mouth, then identifying just what it is that’s on your plate, and finally whether you missed any of it.

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Ceres Power is confident that its energy efficient boiler that generates electricity as well as heat from gas will be on the market by mid-2012, despite a series of delays.

“We’ve got the financial werewithal and strong backing from our customers and suppliers,” Chief Executive Peter Bance told Reuters ahead of a demonstration of the combined heat and power (CHP) boiler to investors and analysts.

“We are trailblazing and that’s not without its risks.”

Ceres had hoped to get the product, in a wall-mounted white box that fits between kitchen cupboards like a standard boiler, to the market by 2011 but was forced to revise that timeline after hardware and software issues took longer than expected to resolve.

It has the backing of Centrica’s British Gas, the leading installer of gas boilers in the country. The company holds a stake of just under 10 percent in Ceres and has committed to order 37,500 of the units over four years.

With just under 41 million pounds ($64.8 million) of cash on its balance sheet following a fundraising in late 2009, Finance Director Rex Vevers said Ceres has the funding to get through to the initial product launch.

Bance said CHP boilers could take a “significant chunk” of the boiler replacement market in the UK, which sees 1.5 million boilers installed a year.

LONDON (Reuters) – Smiths Group (SMIN.L: Quote, Profile, Research) and Babcock (BAB.L: Quote, Profile, Research) reflected the flips sides of government spending cut plans on Wednesday with Babcock seeing opportunities where Smiths sees its sales growth challenged.

Technology group Smiths, whose products range from airport scanners and bomb detectors to medical devices and fuel hoses, said it would increase investment in new higher-margin products as it forecast achieving sales growth would be challenging in the short to medium term.

“At this stage we have to be mindful of the uncertain economic environment but 10 percent (growth in R&D spend) would be a reasonable number if the environment holds as it is at the moment,” Chief Executive Philip Bowman told reporters after Smiths reported better than expected results for the year.

In the year to July 31, the group increased the amount of money it spends from its own coffers on R&D by 5 percent to 93 million pounds.

“Military spending around the world is being reviewed, though we believe that the areas we specialise in, which are fairly niche applications, are likely to see rather more robust demand,” Bowman added.

Bowman said the group, whose customers include the U.S. and UK departments of defence, would continue to reduce its dependence on U.S. and European markets through bolt-on acquisitions in fast-growing areas such Asia, South America and the Middle East.

Shares in Smiths, which have gained 19 percent so far this year, were down 0.82 percent at 1,204 pence at 10:33 a.m. British time.

LONDON (Reuters) – The promised vast expansion of the UK’s offshore wind resources is proving to be a powerful lure for companies not normally associated with renewables but keen to generate eco-friendly and reliable sources of revenue.

Engineers, consultants and oil rig makers, from GKN to Lamprell and Singapore’s Keppel, are setting up new divisions and partnerships in order to get a foothold in the market, which offers secure returns to those building and running the turbines.

Britain now has more offshore wind capacity than the rest of the world combined after Vattenfall opened its huge Thanet wind farm in the estuary of the River Thames on Thursday.

“It’s attractive for a lot of companies that are looking for contracts,” said Ian Simm, chief executive of green fund firm Impax Asset Management, which has holdings in companies such as turbine maker Vestas.

“The fundamental point that makes it attractive is scale and government commitment, and the fact that industrial companies can learn the facts of success in one offshore environment and be able to transfer the majority, if not all, of those skills to other countries,” he said.

Britain, aiming to get 15 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, this year awarded licenses to wind farm developers in a program that could deliver up to 32 gigawatts of generation capacity and require investment of over 75 billion pounds.

However, that is just a small slice of what could be a very large pie if Britain were to make more of its abundant supplies of wind.

LONDON (Reuters) – The promised vast expansion of the UK’s offshore wind resources is proving to be a powerful lure for companies not normally associated with renewables but keen to generate eco-friendly and reliable sources of revenue.

Engineers, consultants and oil rig makers, from GKN (GKN.L: Quote, Profile, Research) to Lamprell (LAM.L: Quote, Profile, Research) and Singapore’s Keppel (KPLM.SI: Quote, Profile, Research), are setting up new divisions and partnerships in order to get a foothold in the market, which offers secure returns to those building and running the turbines.

Britain now has more offshore wind capacity than the rest of the world combined after Vattenfall opened its huge Thanet wind farm in the estuary of the River Thames on Thursday.

“It’s attractive for a lot of companies that are looking for contracts,” said Ian Simm, chief executive of green fund firm Impax Asset Management, which has holdings in companies such as turbine maker Vestas (VWS.CO: Quote, Profile, Research).

“The fundamental point that makes it attractive is scale and government commitment, and the fact that industrial companies can learn the facts of success in one offshore environment and be able to transfer the majority, if not all, of those skills to other countries,” he said.

Britain, aiming to get 15 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, this year awarded licences to wind farm developers in a programme that could deliver up to 32 gigawatts of generation capacity and require investment of over 75 billion pounds.

However, that is just a small slice of what could be a very large pie if Britain were to make more of its abundant supplies of wind.

LONDON (Reuters) – The expected 70 pence per share offer for Britain’s biggest installer of water meters would be a “tidy” amount, the founder and former chief executive of Spice (SPI.L: Quote, Profile, Research) told Reuters on Tuesday.

Simon Rigby, who still holds almost 10 percent of the company he grew into a FTSE 250 firm from just one contract and 12 employees 15 years ago, told Reuters on Tuesday he was not unhappy with the price that private equity firm Cinven is discussing with Spice.

“Clearly in a market like this, 70 pence per share is a lot of cash for anybody to be paying out,” said Rigby.

The bid values the company at about 246.5 million pounds, meaning Rigby and his family could be in line for a payout of about 24 million pounds.

“It does seem as though it will be an all-cash payout and as I and my family own just under 10 percent, that’s a tidy amount of money,” he said.

Spice — an acronym of the company’s values of Society, People, Innovation, Customers, Excellence — agreed to a period of exclusivity with Cinven until Sept 27 after rebuffing two earlier offers.

An offer at 70 pence per share is still a far cry from the highs of 130 pence the shares reached in 2007.

LONDON (Reuters) – British waste management and recycling firm Viridor, part of water group Pennon, is confident local authorities will continue to invest in waste despite expected government cutbacks in October.

“The fundamental point is that councils will be hit by rising landfill tax so if they want to save costs, they have no option but to upgrade their waste management facilities,” Viridor Chief Executive Colin Drummond told Reuters on Tuesday.

Britain is currently seeking to reduce the amount of rubbish it sends to bulging landfill sites and treating waste by recycling or turning it into energy offers a commercial opportunity for companies such as Viridor, Veolia, Sita and private equity-owned Biffa. Drummond, who helped set up Viridor in the early 1990s, said the biggest issue for Viridor was getting its waste-to-energy plants through the onerous planning process and called on the government to publicly support them.

“With all the public sector cutbacks, the absolute priority for the government must be to get private sector investment going,” he said.

Viridor is currently awaiting planning permission for a plant to create energy from burning waste in Oxfordshire in which it hopes to invest over 200 million pounds ($308 million).

“We have a number of projects we can readily finance, which are good economic projects, will generate an appreciable amount of renewable energy, create jobs and divert waste from landfill,” said Drummond, who recently took part in Channel 4 programme “Undercover Boss.”

“The only thing that’s holding us back is the planning system.”

By Victoria Bryan

LONDON (Reuters Life!) – Dining in a completely dark room, unaware what’s on your plate while sitting next to a complete stranger may not sound like an ideal restaurant experience but it’s certainly an intriguing way to spend a rainy night in London.

Dans le Noir?, close to London’s City financial district, is staffed by blind waiters and waitresses who become your eyes according to the restaurant, whose original Paris branch opened in 2004.

In the lit bar, you choose whether you want the fish, meat or vegetable menu but the dishes themselves remain a secret, as do the ingredients of the “surprise” cocktails.

Bags, coats and devices that light up, including watches and mobile phones, are stowed away in lockers, making no distracting texts or emails one of the perks in this restaurant.

Placing your hand on the shoulder of your guide, you are led to a table in a pitch-black dining room that seats up to 60 people. And it is dark. Darkness of a kind you never get to see in a modern world of light pollution.

Only once did we glimpse a square of faint light from a doorway and there were certainly no candles on the cake for a birthday at a table somewhere off in the inky blackness.

LONDON, Sept 9 (Reuters) – British music, books and games retailer HMV Group (HMV.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) hopes rivals to the Ninetendo Wii will drive the games market in the key Christmas period after reporting a worse-than-expected plunge in first-quarter sales .

The departure of long-time Finance Director Neil Bright, who is highly regarded by analysts, and lingering concern over the strategy to become a broad-based entertainment group, offering live music and fashion alongside its other products, also hit its shares, which were down 11.3 percent at 59.17 pence at 0945 GMT.

Overall underlying sales at the group, excluding the new live music division, were down 10.6 percent, while sales in Britain and Ireland dropped 14.9 percent as the soccer World Cup took people’s attention away from DVDs and books.

“Though they had warned that the AGM (annual general meeting) trading update today would be weak because of the impact of the World Cup, the news is still bad,” said analyst Nick Bubb at Arden Partners.

Shares in the 89-year old group have far underperformed other retailers this year but had been gaining ground over the last three months, rising 14 percent against a 1 percent gain for the index. .FTASX5370

Seymour Pierce’s Kate Calvert cut her recommendation on the stock to “sell” from “buy”, saying she was unconvinced by the new strategy and that the Live division would not be enough to offset the migration of HMV’s core retail business to online.

Consumer confidence is still fragile in the United Kingdom. Department store group Debenhams (DEB.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said earlier this week it was cutting prices in a bid to attract wary shoppers and on Thursday, Argos owner Home Retail (HOME.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) forecast a fall in first-half profit. [ID:nLDE6860SA] [ID:nLDE68509T]