Aunt Bessie’s to be sold to Birds Eye owner in £210m deal

The UK company behind Aunt Bessie’s frozen Yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes is to be sold to the owner of Birds Eye, Findus and Goodfella’s Pizza in a £210m deal.

Nomad Foods, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is buying the business from William Jackson Food Group, a 167-year-old family company based in Yorkshire.

The deal includes a factory in Hull and will bring together Aunt Bessie’s – the UK’s number one brand for frozen Yorkshire puddings and the number two for frozen potatoes – with Nomad’s Birds Eye fish fingers, Findus crispy pancakes and Iglo spinach.

Aunt Bessie’s employs 400 people, all based in Hull, and Nomad said all staff would transfer to Birds Eye when the deal is completed during the autumn, taking the group’s total workforce to 1,600.

Wayne Hudson, the Birds Eye managing director, spent the day in Hull talking to Aunt Bessie’s staff to reassure them. “It’s quite a shock to people that the business is being sold,” he said. “Aunt Bessie’s is an incredibly well-known brand. This is a growth story – we have no intentions to close the plant and are integrating it into the Nomad Birds Eye business.”

Frozen food is growing faster than fresh, chilled and shelf-stable food thanks to convenience, higher quality and waste reduction, he said. According to Kantar Worldpanel, frozen food sales rose 6.1% last year, with savoury food up 8.8%.

The deal comes just a few weeks after Nomad bought Goodfella’s, the UK’s biggest frozen pizza brand, for £200m from food tycoon Ranjit Boparan. It will help the food company strengthen its position in the UK, which it described as a “strategically important market”.

Nomad was set up three years ago by billionaires Noam Gottesman, the co-founder of the GLG hedge fund, and Martin E Franklin, who previously founded the US consumer products group Jarden, as an investment vehicle in London and later moved its listing to New York.

Aunt Bessie’s generated revenues of £108m and underlying profits of £20m in the year to April.

The sale leaves William Jackson with its organic vegetables box business Abel & Cole, the Food Doctor and Jackson’s Yorkshire Champion Bread brands, as well as Jacksons and MyFresh which supply supermarkets with bread and vegetables.

The William Jackon chairman, Nicholas Oughtred, said: “Aunt Bessie’s has come a long way with us. We’ve invested heavily in developing the business and the brand, and Nomad Foods is well placed to take the business even further.”