Hazlewood Foods is taking drastic action to improve the performance of its ready meals business.
Problems in this part of the Hazlewood empire hit results for the year to March 31 with turnover up 1.9% to £759.2m and pretax profit before exceptionals up 4.2% to £41.8m. But charges of £41.4m relating to Hazlewood's exit from the UK cooked meat sector and other restructuring costs pushed it into a loss of £400,000.
Chairman Peter Barr said Hazlewood would return to profit growth in the next financial year as it placed greater focus on its core categories, accelerated cost cutting programmes and sold businesses that did not add value.
By then, he said, it would also be reaping the benefits of a £30m investment in new facilities: its sandwich factory in Worksop, large scale bakery in Hull, and extra chilled pizza capacity in Holland.
One surprise was the revelation that John Simons was stepping down as chief executive in favour of Kevin Higginson (see p58). Simons is staying on to mentor Higginson and to help sort out the ready meals business.
That sorting out process will involve "corrective action" at Hazlewood's plant in Wrexham. Further rationalisation of the company's product portfolio is on the cards.
But Hazlewood warned the problems would continue to impact the business.
The own label specialist said ready meals had been hit on a number of fronts notably the failure of its original "ready to cook" proposition and low frozen volumes (see P&P, p49).
- Hazlewood has taken a 63% stake in a pizza factory in France run by Fleury Michon as part of an alliance to develop short shelf life chilled foods. Hazlewood's German sandwich operation has been merged into a joint venture.
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