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Real Good Food (RGD) has announced it has completed the disposal of its sugar business Napier Brown and received a further £3.4m for the business from Tereos.

The extra £3.4m is due to increase in the working capital figure over the initial £7m, making the total working capital payment received from Tereos £10.4m. The total consideration for the sale of Napier Brown is £44.4m.

Tereos has now approved and agreed the completion accounts, thus concluding the deal.

Pieter Totté, executive chairman of Real Good Food commented: “The deal has significantly altered the financial platform from which the company can now operate. We have positive cash balances and are cash generative and profitable. We look forward with great optimism.”

Morning update

It’s a quiet post-bank holiday start to the week before the markets heat up again next week.

There is an update this morning from pub operator Punch Taverns, which said full-year profit will be in line with management expectations and previous guidance and it expects to report underlying EBITDA of between £193m and £200m.

For the 52 weeks to 22 August, core estate net income was up 0.3% and average profit per pub is up by around 4%, benefiting from the disposal of non-core pubs.

The FTSE has opened down 0.9 at 6,189.2pts, as trading sentiment has again been hit by weak data from China – this time poor manufacturing numbers.

The big fallers so far include Morrisons (MRW), down 2.1% to 165p, and Associated British Foods (ABF), down 1.5% to 3,154p.

The week in the City

The rest of the week looks a quiet one for the grocery sector before a glut of trading updates next week from companies including Associated British Foods, Morrisons and John Lewis Group.

There are no company updates in the diary, though there should be an update on Conviviality Retail’s (CVR) pursuit of Matthew Clark this week.

The major economic news will be today’s PMI manufacturing numbers out at 9.30am. The PMI construction data comes tomorrow, while the services and composite numbers are on Wednesday.

The latest US unemployment numbers come on Friday, while the EU’s latest unemployment figures will be published later this morning.

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