Finsbury Foods is ‘open to acquisition offers’

Related tags Bread

Finsbury Foods boss John Duffy has not ruled out the prospect of the firm being open to more approaches, after a bid to acquire the firm fell through last year.

"The general view is that the cake market is up for more consolidation," said Duffy.

However, he said there had been no official enquiries recently. "As always, there's lots of chat, but there has not been anything of late. We have got a loyal, strong shareholder base and we're running the business for the long haul." Takeover discussions were terminated in July last year.

Finsbury has established a £2M 'free from' production facility supporting the launch of its Genius 'free from' bread range. The firm reported like-for-like sales for this business section up 14% in the 26 weeks to January 2 2010 compared with the same period last year.

Duffy also reported the consolidation of Finsbury's cake distribution in Scotland, with one central warehouse at Eurocentral, Lanarkshire, now handling all its products. The depot is running at 50% capacity with room for considerable further expansion.

Finsbury also announced the appointment of Greencore's Frances Swallow to the newly created role of group technical director.

Group revenue for the 26 weeks to January 2 was £82.9M, down 7% on the same period last year, while pre-tax profit remained flat at £1.8M.