Now, he said, this view has turned full circle despite potential cost savings of 12 to 13 per cent. For multi-billion turnover businesses, the potential benefits are huge.Mr Watkin's views were echoed by many Old Economy business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week. There, the view was that a year ago B2B was about getting your share price up. Now it is about back to basics.Also at Davos, Phil Condit, chairman and chief executive of Boeing, said half its costs were transaction-related and that the IT revolution provided an immense opportunity to cut them.

With 32,000 suppliers, the chance to shave just a few points off the cost base would represent a huge saving, he said.So, while it is true that an internet strategy will no longer put a rocket under a company's share price, many of the world's biggest corporations are still pushing ahead with their business exchange ideas as margins come under pressure and cost control becomes all important.Virtually every industry sector has its own exchange, or hub. In the leisure sector, Bass, Whitbread, Accor and Granada-Compass have grouped to form an as-yet-unnamed hub to buy food, drink and travel. In aerospace, BAE Systems, Boeing and Lockheed Martin have formed a huge $71bn joint portal. There are exchanges in food manufacturing, retailing, oil and cars.But progress has been slow. For example, the leisure industry announced its e-hub last August, but so far it has no name and has not begun trading, and one of its five founding members, Hilton, has dropped out.

Other hubs are also failing to make much headway, with only a handful of online auctions so far.J Sainsbury is one UK company that is keen to push ahead. Sainsbury's is a founder member of GlobalNetExchange, a food retailing hub that also includes Carrefour of France.Patrick McHugh, Sainsbury's head of e-commerce, admits that software problems have slowed the development of GlobalNetExchange. He said typical cost savings in auctions have been 5 to 10 per cent, but have been as high as 40 per cent. So far the exchange has held an online tendering exercise for a three-month supply of Cheddar cheese, and one for new tyres for a vehicle fleet. It is also using the hub to speed up response to customer complaints.Sainsbury's hopes to route up to 70 per cent of its product sourcing through the exchange within two to three years.Meanwhile, Tesco, Sainsbury's rival, is a member of the Worldwide Retail Exchange. Tesco has held an online auction for the supply of corned beef. It said the increased accuracy of internet tendering, as opposed to verbal exchanges that are then transferred on to written forms, represents as big a gain as lower prices.Barry Knichel, Tesco's supply-chain development director, said the online auctions would produce a one-off benefit by helping the group establish a base price for certain items.

But the longer term gains will be in developing closer relationships with those suppliers. "It will be about collaborative planning with suppliers enabling us to manage our distribution chain better," he said "You can only squeeze things so far.". Scientists are hoping to deploy a cunning new weapon in the war against food fraud. They are developing a test to sniff out the true origin of a regional cheese. Scientists are hoping to deploy a cunning new weapon in the war against food fraud. They are developing a test to sniff out the true origin of a regional cheese. The research is aimed at combating the multi-million-pound business of conning consumers by selling cheese and other dairy items not produced in the region from which they claim to originate.Rather than relying on smell, the test will distinguish a Buxton blue from a foreign fake by analysing the trace elements that give it a hidden, but unique signature.Scientists from the Food Standards Agency said yesterday that prototype tests had already identified two scams in Europe involving cheese and butter. One was in Italy where cheap cheeses made in Austria and Germany were passed off as speciality Grana Padano or Grana Trentino, expensively produced from a blend of Italian Alpine milks.Another scam involved a "circular trade" in butter.