Rivington Biscuits’ brands put up for sale

Rivington Biscuits’ manufactured brands including Pink Panther wafers, Count Down and Montana. They will be sold by intellectual property consulting firm Metis Partners, which predicted the entire UK biscuit market was worth about £4bn.

Metis Partners’ head of corporate recovery Nat Naldin said: “Rivington Biscuits’ products were well-known in the market and were sold through a number of national retail chains.

‘Sold at national retail chains’

“The company catered for a variety of markets and was well-positioned in the growing ‘free-from’ sector, with products such as its No Wheat gluten-free chocolate and orange wafer.”

Metis Partners would conduct a global campaign to market, and dispose of the biscuit brand portfolio. The brands were likely to attract interest from manufacturing, retail and lifestyle businesses, it said.

Any potential deal would include the goodwill in the Rivington Biscuits brand portfolio, a registered trademark portfolio and organisational knowledge, Metis Partners said.

All offers should be submitted directly to Metis Partners by 12pm on April 25, it said.

Rivington Biscuits axed 99 jobs at its sites in Wigan and Harderwijk in the Netherlands in December, after the falling value of sterling sent the firm into administration. The appointed administrators, FRP Advisory, said the business had no viable option than to announce the redundancies.

‘Sustained deterioration’

Administrator Russell Cash said at the time: “A sustained deterioration in trading conditions and significant additional pricing costs since the summer following the sharp fall in the value of the pound, left the business facing unsustainable cash­flow pressure.

“Rivington Biscuits continues to trade through administration but with a reduced staff base in order to fulfil current orders into the New Year.”

The biscuit maker manufactured 30 different biscuits brands. It supplied some of Britain’s biggest retailers, including Lidl, Aldi, Morrisons, Tesco and Iceland.

Meanwhile, last week the fish processing firm Aquila Processing entered into administration, after suffering financial pressure as a result of the weakness of sterling.