Food group in €9.05m sale deal

GREENCORE yesterday announced it has sold its interest in James Budgett Sugars for €9.05 million.

Greencore owned a third of Budgetts with ED&F Man Holdings Ltd, holding the balance, the disposal of which also forms part of this transaction.

Budgetts is a British distributor of sugar to the food and soft drinks industries.

The value of the transaction to Greencore is comprised as follows:

€5.75m cash paid at completion.

Deferred consideration of €0.25m cash paid on the second anniversary of completion.

€0.42m being a third of the net debt of Budgetts at completion.

1,395,349 new ordinary shares in Napier Brown Foods, which will rank pari passu (at an equal pace) in all respects with the existing ordinary shares and which are expected to be admitted to trading on AIM shortly.

On the closing middle market quotation of 126.5 pence per ordinary share on July 6, 2004, these shares are valued at €2.63m.

In its financial year ended September 26, 2003, Greencore’s share of the operating profit of Budgetts amounted to €1.6m. Greencore’s share of the net assets of Budgetts at completion amounted to €2.98m; in addition goodwill of €1.83m was written off to reserves on the date of Greencore’s acquisition of its stake in Budgetts and will be included in the calculation of profit on disposal.

Chief executive David Dilger said the sale would enable Greencore to continue to sharpen its focus on convenience food.