Northern Foods
 |
|
| Private | |
| Industry | Food |
| Founded | 1937 as Northern Dairies |
| Headquarters | Leeds, West Yorkshire, England |
|
Key people
|
Ranjit Singh Boparan |
| Revenue | £975.2 million (2009) |
| £52.7 million (2009) | |
| £2.5 million (2009) | |
|
Number of employees
|
9,890 (2009) |
| Parent | Boparan Holdings |
| Subsidiaries | Gunstones bakery, Solway Foods, Fox's Biscuits, Green Isle Foods, Hollands Pies, Pennine Foods, Matthew Walker |
Northern Foods Ltd is a British food manufacturer headquartered in Leeds, England. It was formerly listed on the and was a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index. The company was scheduled to merge with Greencore Group in 2011 to form Essenta Foods, the group being headquartered in Dublin, and listed on the FTSE. On 21 January 2011 Ranjit Singh Boparan announced a bid to buy Northern Foods, which succeeded in gaining sufficient shareholder support to proceed, resulting in the appointment of Boparan as the company's chairman in April 2011.
The business was founded by Alec Horsley in 1937 as a family-run dairy business based in Holme on Spalding Moor. In 1942 the business was registered as Northern Dairies and became a public company in 1956. In 1958, Alec's son Nicholas Horsley joined the then Northern Dairies as a trainee manager, becoming a director in 1963. His first great business success was to acquire, very cheaply, a stake in a small ice-cream company called Mr Whippy, which he sold on to Charles (now Lord) Forte for a very high price two years later.
It was only when his father retired, in 1969, that Nick came into his own as chairman. Three years later, under Nick's chairmanship, Northern Dairies changed its name to Northern Foods, and, within a few years, Nick had successfully diversified the business, widening Northern Foods' portfolio into Marks & Spencer cakes (through Park Cakes), Smith's Flour Milling, brewing (with the purchase of Hull Brewery), Fox's Biscuits, Pork Farms and many other smaller firms. It was during this period that the company pioneered the market in chilled, prepared meals and sandwiches in supermarkets.
Acquisitions continued in the 1980s, including that of Dorset Chilled Foods in 1981, Bowyers and Elkes Biscuits in 1985, Batchelors in 1986 and Evesham Foods in 1988. In 1987 the company built the most advanced food factory in Europe, the Fenlands Food Factory in Grantham, and dedicated it entirely to Marks & Spencer.
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