Premier Foods adds Quorn to its kitty |
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Tue, 07 Jun 2005 18:45
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Branston Pickle and Ambrosia maker, Premier Foods, has acquired Quorn in a deal worth £172m. Quorn, which had sales of £79m last year, is now poised to become Premier's biggest single brand." We like British brands and this is certainly up there as a great British brand - it may not have the history of some of our other products, but it's a UK market leader," said Premier Chief Executive Robert Schofield.
Premier, which figured so prominently in the food recall saga in February said that it would complete the purchase of Marlow Foods, maker of Quorn products later on Monday.
Montagu Private Equity, which currently owns Quorn, had acquired the business from AstraZeneca in May 2003 in a deal worth £70m. Montagu was quoted as saying that it will have made about five times its initial £30m investment by the time the deal is completed.
| Premier Chief Executive Robert Schofield said that targeting all healthy eaters through adding products and stepping up marketing could exponentially increase the market for Quorn. Quorn was developed by ICI and is derived from the edible soil-mould Fusarium venenatum. It is basically made from fungal mycoprotein.
"We are going to target it at wider consumers. We are going to de-fad it. It's a product that's more about general health than vegetarianism. With over 70pc of households seeking to eat more healthily, Quorn's excellent credentials mean it is strongly aligned to consumer trends," Mr. Schofield said.
He sought to dismiss concerns about a lawsuit in the US which alleges that Quorn can cause life-threatening allergies by saying, "The intolerance level to Quorn is one in every 145,000 people compared with one in every 300 for Soya. During due diligence we went into this to the nth degree and decided it wasn't a major issue."
At the moment, no redundancies are planned among the 360 strong staff at Quorn.
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