Management's wily move for Fox's

NORTHERN Foods, which last week jettisoned its chief executive, today followed up by offloading its most famous brand, Fox's Glacier Mints.

The company said it was selling its Leicester-based confectionery division to a management buy-in team, calling itself Big Bear Limited, for £9.4m, including £2.4m debt.

Northern had owned the business only two years, having acquired it from Nestle UK for £8m in 2001.

As well as the famous mints, a staple of dreary business conferences, Fox's also makes Glacier Fruits, Paynes Poppets, Just Brazils and XXX Mints.

However, it is for the mints, launched in 1919, that Fox's is best known. They were pushed into the national consciousness in the Seventies with a high-profile advertising campaign featuring a laconic cartoon polar bear called Peppy, on top of a huge mint.

The mint was portrayed in the ad as virtually transparent, with the other character in the campaign, an irritating fox, constantly - and amusingly - bumping into it.

The sale is the first sign of a major restructuring of Northern after last week's ousting of underperforming chief executive Jo Stewart and another profit warning.