Executive Summary
The company is a producer of chilled and frozen convenience food. The company operates in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland and provides European retailers with private label and branded products ranging from desserts and salads to fish and ready meals. The company’s HQ is in Gerrards Cross in Buckinghamshire with offices also in France and Germany. The company currently has approximately 6,500 members of staff based across Europe and the UK and has nine directors.
Rising raw material prices and changing consumer behaviour (trading down from premium ranges) hit the company in 2008 and in the annual report the Chairman announced that the Northern Europe and French operations would be sold or a joint venture partner found to create value, allowing the company to focus on the UK.
The company’s major customers are Marks and Spencer, Tesco, Asda, Waitrose, The Co-op.
One of the legacies of the old Unigate business is the pension scheme which has 21,000 members and a deficit in the balance sheet at 31 December 2008 of GB£171m, compared to group equity of GB£91m at the same date and a market cap at 9 September 2009 in the region of GB£46m. Another legacy issue is a disputed distribution contract with Wincanton, but against this, there are tax losses such that the company is unlikely to pay corporation tax for many years. [1]
Company History
The company was formed in 1959 by the merger of United Dairies with Cow and Gate Ltd hence renamed Unigate Plc. Apart from the production of various chilled goods Unigate also had a vast Milk home delivery system. However during the late 1990’s and with the rapid growth of supermarket sales of milk the home delivery system started to suffer severe losses and in 2000 the milk and cheese division was sold to Dairy Crest. The company changed it’s name to Uniq in July 2000.
The company is listed on the Main Market at the London Stock Exchange and was first listed on 3rd April 1959.
Current Events
In March 2009 the company announced that they would sell the group’s UK chilled fish business – Pinneys of Scotland to the Foodvest Group.
The six months results to 30 June 2009 reveal further trading losses [2] [(GB£12.8m) but an agreed €73m sale of the French business.
Recent trading
The interims to…
