4,000 jobs saved after bosses buy pork firm
FOUR thousand jobs have been saved after a Yorkshire-based private equity firm supported the management buy-out (MBO) of the pork division at Vion UK.
The deal has been backed by Leeds-based Endless, which has a track record of buying and transforming non-core businesses.
The agreement is subject to Competition Authority approval in Ireland.
The announcement followed the decision by Dutch-based food producer Vion to sell its UK food operations, which employ 13,000 people at 38 sites, so it can focus on its core food activities in the Netherlands and Germany and its global ingredients business.
There had been fears that the looming sale could pose a threat to Yorkshire’s economy, because Vion has a number of major factories, including a bacon plant in Malton, North Yorkshire.
Vion employs 900 people at its plant in Malton, along with 400 at its Scunthorpe pork factory and 169 at a sausage and burger plant in Hull.
Discussions are ongoing with a number of prospective buyers for Vion’s other UK business units, for poultry and red meat.
The MBO has been led by Seamus Carr, the managing director of Vion’s pork business unit, who said yesterday: “Our ambitions for the new business are, firstly, to maintain the excellent levels of service and product quality which have helped us secure orders from all the major supermarkets, and then to build upon the opportunities in the marketplace to grow the business.”
A spokesman for Endless said: “We are delighted to have been selected by the MBO team to support their plans and aspirations for such a strategically important business in the UK food sector, with its focus on local produce at a time when customers’ demands for British sourced food are increasing.”
greg.wright@ypn.co.uk
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Friday 24 May 2013
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