If things had gone differently and Ranjit Boparan hadn’t made his audacious eleventh-hour grab for Northern Foods we might have been reporting on the results of Essenta Foods this morning. Then again if Arjen Robben could take a penalty kick, Spurs fans wouldn’t be looking so glum this week.
As for Boparan, he scored with Northern, leaving Greencore with what some saw as the equivalent of Europa League Thursday nights on Channel 5 - Uniq.
Today we got our first real look at how the new look Greencore was getting on. Finance chief Alan Williams told The Grocer it might be another year before some analysts would be prepared to say whether or not the Uniq deal had been a success. But Williams was clearly pleased.
The deal helped the convenience food business deliver a 36.7% rise in group operating profits to £31.7m, with sales up 49.9% to £567.7m for the six months to 30 March.
The addition of Uniq has given Greencore much greater presence with M&S, particularly in terms of its premium sandwiches. Despite the gloom around that retailer generally today, its food sales were up 3.9% and Greencore clearly benefited from this.
It is also benefitting from the general trend of retailers pulling back from out-of-town hypermarkets and focusing on smaller town centre site (as was outlined in our annual Grocery Retail Structure last week).
Williams still believes that the Northern merger would have been a great deal but there are no regrets. “You can’t stand around worrying about things that don’t happen,” he explains. “You have to focus on the thing that did happen and then doing those really well.”
A lesson for all of us - not just those in North London.
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