The new bosses at Fox’s are confident they can drive sales beyond the £100m barrier to make the Leicester-based company a leading light in the confectionery market.

Former Rank Hovis chairman Paul Wilkinson and ex-Hillsdown Holdings deputy chairman John Jackson led a management buy-in at the Northern Foods subsidiary this week, in a £9.4m deal which was backed by private investment and structured by Investec Private Bank.

The £15m company - which makes brands such as Fox’s Glacier Mints, Paynes Poppets, Just Brazils and XXX mints - was the first of several non-core
businesses that Northern Foods announced it had put on the market this week.

“We are looking to acquire powerful niche brands in the confectionery market, which is
highly fragmented and ripe for consolidation,” said Wilkinson, who left RHM in January to pursue other opportunities in the food and drink industry. “The prospects are very exciting. We’re just about to launch Fox Cubs - a new soft-eat fruit product with natural colours and flavourings - and we can do a lot more to get better distribution in the multiples.”

Former managing director of Ashbury confectionery, Mario Gianotta, has taken over from Fox’s MD Bill McKeever, who will remain at Northern Foods, said a company spokesman.

Northern Foods finance director Sean Christie, commenting on the buy-in, said: “Fox’s is profitable, but at less than 1% of our sales, just too small for us to focus on properly.

“We would have had to spend 10 years getting it to a size that really mattered.”

>>p35 Northern’s frontiers
Elaine Watson

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