A Hovis bakery strike has shed light on the practice of zero-hours contracts, whereby workers are “on-call” as opposed to having fixed hours and must take work when they are offered it.
The managing director of Premier Foods’ bakery arm tasked with driving the struggling bread business forward has resigned and will leave the firm early 2013.
Premier Foods will shut two bakery sites and remove 130 distribution routes at a cost of £28m ($44.5m); a move sparked by its lost Co-op bread contract.
Allied Bakeries has secured an important win as it strikes a supply contract with UK retailer the Co-op that Premier Foods has been forced to cut, ABF’s finance director says.
Premier Foods has split its bread business and upped sales in Hovis over the last quarter, but it has a lot more work to do and distribution is the sensitive issue that needs to be addressed, says an analyst.
Debt-ridden Premier Foods has made a 'logical' decision to split its struggling bread arm from grocery in a bid to drive business forward, an analyst says.
Premier Foods will need to invest to truly differentiate in the UK breakfast biscuit segment as competition is fierce from rivals like Kraft Foods and Kellogg, according to an analyst.
UK food group Premier Foods will need to rid businesses in order to stabilise following its ‘truly awful’ full year results, analysts say, but predictions of sell-offs remain mixed.
Analysts note the ‘truly awful’ financial results for 2011 from Premier Foods as the UK group announced a £259.1m (€312.6) pre-tax loss for the full-year after writing down the value of its bread division.
Several private label and secondary and tertiary brands such as Paxo Stuffing are likely to be divested by Premier Foods in the coming months, claim analysts, as the UK manufacturer gets breathing space from investors.
After Premier Foods’ announced this week that it plans to up its spend on ‘power brands’ such as Hovis, Investec analyst Martin Deboo told BakeryAndSnacks.com that UK bread was a “terrible industry” to be in due to industry overcapacity.
Premier Foods CEO Michael Clarke says he is pursuing a strategy of 'category blur' to revive the company’s disappointing trading performance, as he announces new marketing ammunition for the bakery and snack ‘power brands’ central to the approach.
Premier Foods boss Michael Clarke has received a resounding vote of confidence from city analysts, six months into his role, as he continues his plan to guide the firm out of trouble.
The £34.7M sale of Premier Foods’ four Irish brands, Chivers, Gateaux, McDonnells and the Erin licence, to the Boyne Valley Group underline worries about the food giant’s ability to generate cash, one leading analyst has warned.
UK-based Premier Foods has reached an agreement to sell its chilled bakery business Brookes Avana to the 2 Sisters Group as it focuses on eight ‘power brands’.
Troubled food giant Premier Foods still has a mountain to climb despite ceo Michael Clarke’s decision to restructure the business and appoint two new managing director (mds), according to city analysts.
In a bid to unlock the potential of the part-baked market in the UK, Premier Foods said it is launching a new range of Hovis branded part-baked loaves and rolls, the first bread brand to do so.
Premier foods will need to focus on revitalizing the likes of Hovis to drive growth, leveraging prominent trends such as health and nostalgia said Datamonitor, as the company posted pre-tax loss from continuing businesses of £98m, versus a profit of £42m...
Premier Foods will need to turn things around pretty quickly over the coming months or patience in its chief executive could run out, City analysts and corporate finance sources have warned.
Premier Foods has been ordered to pay out almost ₤21,000 and slammed by UK safety authorities after an industrial accident in which a 65-kg metal pillar crushed the skull of one of its workers.
Rank Hovis is to increase the price of flour by £89.37 per tonne, effective 6 September, Lawrence Watson, head of sales and marketing, revealed exclusively to our sister publication British Baker earlier this week.
Assured Food Standards (AFS) administrators will meet with Premier Foods with a view to including the Red Tractor logo on Rank Hovis products, although further developments will take time, they say.
A claim that an advert for Hovis rolls from leading UK manufacturer, Premier Foods, was misleading consumers has been rejected by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
Over the last two years, Premier Foods has increased Hovis’s market share of the UK bread market by four percentage points up to 26.3 per cent, reports our sister publication Food Manufacture.
WRAP and Premier Foods plan to work together in the UK to discovery why consumers throw away so much bakery food and formulate a strategy to tackle the problem.
Premier Foods, the maker of Hovis bread, reports 'good progress' in
recovering commodity inflation as price increases passed onto
retailers offset high ingredient costs.
The chief executive of Premier Foods, Robert Schofield, has called
on the British government to encourage more wheat planting to help
restore the balance between supply and demand as wheat prices
continue to soar.
UK-based Premier Foods today confirmed it will cut its annual
shareholder payout in half, as the rising price of wheat and other
commodities continue to dog the bakery firm.
As the commodity squeeze continues to bite, Premier Foods slashes
its shareholder payout, Sara Lee chairman buys some of her own
shares, and J&J snack foods increases prices across the US.
Soaring commodity costs have sent Premier Foods share prices
tumbling and may cause the company to breach its banking covenants,
according to analysts.
UK-based Premier Foods had an organic sales gain of three per cent
in the four months to the end of October and said its is on
course to meet its market forecast for the full year.
Premier Foods will further increase the price of its bakery
products if the cost of wheat remains high, the company said
yesterday in releasing its interim results.
UK food processor Premier Foods remains undaunted by last year's
rising raw material costs and unseasonably warm summer weather -
posting a 12 per cent rise in pre-tax profits in its preliminary
results announced yesterday.
In a bid to cut costs, UK-based Premier Foods said it would close
down two of its factories over the next six months, cut about 450
jobs and invest in making three of its plants more efficient.
UK food group Premier Foods is poised to consolidate its leading
position in the British snack market with the £1.23bn (€1.8bn)
acquisition of bakery company RHM.
Premier Foods has dropped out of the bidding war over United
Biscuits, leaving US equity firm Blackstone as the sole contender
for the European snack giant.
The UK's Premier Foods is believed to have offered United Biscuits
an initial £1bn bid for its northern European snack food operations
- even though City analysts claim the business is worth £2.3bn.
UK food manufacturer RHM remains undeterred by last year's slump in
Mr Kipling cake sales - their financial second half results show
business is improving with the aid of healthy Hovis products.
