Flint workers at Headland Foods to learn their fate

14-Feb-2011 - Last updated on 14-Feb-2011 at 12:17 GMT

Headland Foods has a second site in Grimsby

Staff at Headland Foods’ ready meals factory in Flint will find out on Wednesday whether they will keep their jobs under new owner Kerry Group.

Staff at Headland Foods – which operates factories in Flint and Grimsby (pictured) making frozen own-label ready meals for the supermarkets – learned that Headland had been acquired by Kerry Group just before Christmas.

However, the consultation over proposals to shut down the Flint operation has continued, despite the change in ownership.

Speaking to FoodManufacture.co.uk this morning, Kerry Group’s director of corporate affairs Frank Hayes said: “The consultation at Flint [which employs more than 320 people] completes today and we will be meeting with the site’s works committee on Wednesday afternoon.”

Economies of scale

Last month, he said: “The frozen ready meals sector is highly competitive and profitability has been impacted.

“But we are fully committed to this market. This acquisition gives us more economies of scale and a stronger position in the marketplace.”

Kerry has a large frozen ready meals plant (Rye Valley Foods) at Carrickmacross in County Monaghan in Northern Ireland that supplies the UK retail market, said Hayes. But the acquisition of Headland would give it a presence in mainland Britain.

Headland, which was part of the private equity-backed Prize Food Group, made almost a quarter of its workforce at Flint redundant in early 2009.