Food firm flotations making meal of it

ENOUGH floats are heading for the stock market food sector to make a small parade.

Premier Foods, born out of the old Hillsdown group, hopes to float soon at a £1.3bn value. Its brands include Typhoo Tea, Hartley Jam, HP Sauce and Branston Pickle.

Irish snacks and cider group C&C is floating next week with a likely £660m value.

Speculation is growing about Hovis bread group RHM, which dropped plans to float two years ago.

Premier has been owned by US private investor Hicks, Muse since 1999. Hicks swept up a series of solid food brands into a larger group.

Starting with Hillsdown in 1999, it bought a batch of Nestle brands two years ago, then paid £642m for family-owned Weetabix in November. Weetabix may not be included in the float.

In 2002, Premier Foods (Holdings) made £23m pretax profits on sales of £882m. Its biggest seller was canned foods (£376m) and it sold £150m of potatoes.

Operating profits after exceptionals were £56m, cash flow from operations was £100m. The tax charge was just £200,000. Its £250m pension scheme had a £25m deficit in October 2002.

Separately, Northern Foods sold its Eden Vale yoghurt and desserts plant at Minsterley, Shropshire, to Uniq for £16.5m cash. It has struggled since Northern sold its Ski yoghurt brand to Nestle, and lost £3.8m last year on £59m sales. Northern fell 3 1/4p to 155 1/2p, Uniq fell 6p to 164p.