Northern Foods in £35m tins sale

NORTHERN Foods is poised to unveil the sale of its Irish tinned food businesses for about £35 million. The deal, the most significant yet in its drive to focus on chilled ready meals, will certainly be completed by the New year.

The news comes days after Pat O'Driscoll, formerly at oil giant Shell, was appointed Northern's new chief executive.

The Irish operation includes Batchelors baked beans, which outsell Heinz in Ireland by twotoone, as well as Squeez orange juice and Picnic canned fish.

Northern is selling the business to Barry's, a tea importer owned by former Irish foreign minister Peter Barry. Northern will keep its Irish frozen food business, Green Isle.

Under chairman Peter Blackburn, Northern has been making strenuous efforts this year to tidy up its business portfolio so it can concentrate on its strongest areas of expertise. Northern supplies about a third of Marks & Spencer's chilled food.

The only business sold so far has been the confectionery operation, which makes Fox's Glacier Mints, Payne's Poppets, Just Brazils and XXX Mints. Northern is also looking for a buyer for Holland's pies, based in Lancashire, and is likely to sell its flour businesses.

Northern's lacklustre performance cost former chief executive Jo Stewart's job in May when it became clear the company was going to have to issue its third profits warning within 18 months. Since then, the company has been run by Blackburn.

O'Driscoll, 44, who ran Shell's petrol forecourts business in Europe, takes over in April.