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SEAFOOD chief Ranjit Boparan looks to have succeeded in his daring bid to buy Northern Foods.
The Leeds based group, which also includes fish in its portfolio, has accepted a £342million bid from Mr Boparan just hours before the Friday night deadline imposed by the Takeover Panel.
Northern Foods was all set to merge with the Irish ready meals company Greencore when Mr Boparan swooped earlier this month. But the Northern Foods’ directors have now switched their backing to Mr Boparan, who would take the company into private ownership and merge it into his seafood and frozen chicken business. However, it is still possible that Greencore could offer to inject more money into its proposed merger with Northern but analysts are predicting that the Dublin-based group of investors will prefer Mr Boparan's cash to Greencore's all share offer. Greencore said last night that the "fight is far from over".
Making his 73p-a-share offer, Mr Boparan said: “The combined group will be one of Britain’s major food suppliers with a turnover of more than £2 billion.” The enlarged business will employ more than 16,000 people. Northern Foods used to be based in Hull but has moved its HQ across Yorkshire to Leeds. Mr Boparan is a man clearly going places in the chilled and frozen food business. Until a year ago his main business was poultry. Then he moved into the fish business in a big way, first buying the Harry Ramsden fish restaurant chain plus four of the up-market Fishworks restaurants.
Four months later he swooped for Five Star Fish at Grimsby after its parent company British Seafood went into administration. Now he has added Northern Foods to his growing food empire.
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