Premier to close six UK sites following RHM acquisition

Premier Foods has announced that it is to close six of its 11 ambient UK sites having completed a review of its UK manufacturing facilities following its acquisition of RHM in March.

The six sites earmarked for closure by early 2009 are at Bristol, Droylsden in Manchester, Ledbury in Herefordshire, Middlewich in Cheshire, Reading in Berkshire, and Wythenshawe in Manchester. Premier has commenced consultation on the closures with the employees affected. The closures reportedly put around 900 jobs at risk, although around 300 new jobs are also being created.

The review, which covered Premier's ambient factories, theRHM Culinary Brands factories and the RHM Customer Partnership's Ledbury Preserves factory, focused on optimising efficiency across the remaining sites and ensuring that it retained the capacity to support the growth of its brands.

It expects to make savings of £113M as a result of bringing the two companies together: £28M from the Campbell's operations and £85M from RHM’s, and invest “significantly” in its remaining five sites.

It will focus dry food production at three sites in Worksop in Nottinghamshire, Knighton in Staffordshire and Ashford in Kent. Preserves and spreads production will be concentrated at its Histon site in Cambridgeshire.

Production of chutneys, pastes and cooking sauces will be moved to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk and foodservice desserts moved to Knighton.

Robert Schofield, Chief Executive of Premier, said: “Our priority continues to be growing our business and our brands and to do this we need to remain competitive in the market place. These proposals will enable us to enhance our efficiency whilst giving us the capability to drive our branded sales growth."

He added: “We appreciate the impact our proposals willhave on employees at those sites and we will work with them to explore opportunities for redeployment within the group or outside of the company.”