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1 month ago | 
thegrocer.co.uk | Ed Devlin
Consumer confidence has made a marginal improvement ahead of next week’s spring budget but there were no signs of any real recovery, according to a closely watched survey out this morning.
The GfK index for March showed a one-point rise in headline confidence levels to -19.
Views on personal finances for the past year are slightly down from -7 to -9, while perceptions of the wider economy over the last 12 months and looking ahead a year are each up two points at -42 and -29 respectively.
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1 month ago | 
thegrocer.co.uk | Ed Devlin
Source: The Vegetarian Butcher
Unilever has agreed to sell The Vegetarian Butcher to JBS-owned Vivera for an undisclosed price.
The Hellmann’s and Magnum owner hired bankers at Piper Sandler to offload the plant-based brand late last year as part of an ongoing portfolio optimisation.
It bought The Vegetarian Butcher in 2018 from founder Jaap Korteweg.
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1 month ago | 
thegrocer.co.uk | Ed Devlin
Will Bakkavor founders sell to Greencore, what are the benefits of the proposed mega-merger - and would the CMA clear it? Greencore CEO Dalton Philips was in confident form as he fronted the sandwich maker’s first capital markets day for more than five years in February, impressing the gathered analysts, investors and supermarket partners.
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1 month ago | 
thegrocer.co.uk | Ed Devlin
Losses have widened at Inspired Pet Nutrition ahead of the transformative acquisition by the private equity-owned petfood group of Butcher’s Pet Care.
Revenues, which have grown rapidly since CapVest took charge of the group in 2020, slipped 4.6% to £188.6m in the year to 29 June 2024 as IPN prioritised higher-margin brands over own label, newly filed accounts showed.
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1 month ago | 
thegrocer.co.uk | Ed Devlin
Artisan online cheesemonger Cheesegeek has been rescued from administration by the Albex Group, The Grocer can reveal.
However, the pre-pack deal means Dragons’ Den investor Steven Bartlett and other backers, including the crowd, won’t see a return on their investment. Cheesegeek was Bartlett’s first investment after joining Dragons’ Den in 2022, with the entrepreneur offering £150k in return for a 5% stake that valued the business at £3m.
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1 month ago | 
thegrocer.co.uk | Ed Devlin
PepsiCo said the brand’s ‘consumer-first approach, cultural cache and nutritional profile’ had ‘nurtured a loyal fanbase and driven rapid growth’
PepsiCo has entered the on-trend gut health soda category with the $1.95bn acquisition of Poppi.
Founded in 2018 by husband-and-wife duo Stephen and Allison Ellsworth in Texas under the name Mother Beverage, the business rebranded after an appearance on Shark Tank – the US equivalent of Dragons’ Den – that same year.
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1 month ago | 
thegrocer.co.uk | Ed Devlin
Eagle Eye is aiming to propel revenues towards £100m following a reset of the business to focus more on its software as a service (SaaS) operation.
The group, which works with the supermarkets and a wide array of retail customers, posted flat turnover of £24.2m in the six months to 31 December, with adjusted EBITDA also the same as a year ago at £5.9m.
However, Eagle Eye reported strong growth in its high-margin SaaS division, up 10% year on year, with a 36% increase in AI sales.
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1 month ago | 
thegrocer.co.uk | Ed Devlin
Bakkavor has rebuffed a £1.1bn takeover approach by food-to-go rival Greencore, a statement released to the London Stock Exchange has revealed.
A merger of the two London-listed companies would create a convenience foods giant with combined turnover of about £4bn.
Greencore confirmed, following a story in Bloomberg, it made two proposals to Bakkavor regarding a possible cash and shares offer.
Bakkavor’s board rejected the first bid on 25 February and a second approach on 10 March.
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1 month ago | 
thegrocer.co.uk | Ed Devlin
Source: Getty Images (IR Stone)
The UK economy contracted unexpectedly in January, dealing Chancellor Rachel Reeves a blow ahead of the crucial spring budget later this month.
The latest data from the Office for National Statistics revealed the economy shrank 0.1% in January following a weaker than expected performance and growth of 0.4% in December. Economists had been anticipating growth of 0.1% for the month.
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1 month ago | 
thegrocer.co.uk | Ed Devlin
Profits have tripled at the John Lewis Partnership as the retail group made “solid” progress on its turnaround but staff still missed out on a bonus for the third year in a row.
Sales at the group rose 3% year on year to £12.4bn in the 52 weeks ended 25 January, with all the growth coming from the Waitrose chain. The supermarket continued positive momentum to increase sales 4% to £8bn as volumes climbed 2.6%, while sales at John Lewis remained flat at £4.8bn.
