Finsbury Foods buys Anthony Alan Foods

Finsbury Food Group has snapped up low fat cake maker Anthony Alan Foods in a £3.75M deal.Anthony Alan, a sales and marketing business which has the...

Finsbury Food Group has snapped up low fat cake maker Anthony Alan Foods in a £3.75M deal.

Anthony Alan, a sales and marketing business which has the rights to distribute ambient cakes under the Weight Watchers brand, made a pre tax profit of £0.7M on sales of £11.6M in the year to March 2007.

According to market researcher TNS, the Weight Watchers brand is the largest in the low fat cake sector with a market share of 58%.

Finsbury chief executive Dave Brooks said: "Finsbury currently produces nearly 60% of the Anthony Alan Foods product range. Through this acquisition, we will be able to drive the growth of the business further and develop the product range. This gives us the market leading position in low fat cakes to complement our leading position in the premium and celebration cakes sectors."

Finsbury, which operates five factories supplying a range of baked goods to the multiple grocers, last month hinted that it was back on the acquisition trail after integrating recent purchase Lightbody Group and rebuilding its Bathgate bakery.