In addition to Urban Eat, Samworth also acquired select plant and machinery from Adelie Foods’ Southall site for £475,000. The Real Wrap Co, Winterbotham Derby and Hollieco Limited also acquired plant and machinery worth a combined £915,000 from various Adelie sites, according to the statement of administrator Deloitte’s proposal, filed with Companies House on 5 August.
Buyers of Adelie Foods assets
Samworth Brothers: bought the Urban Eat brand and associated intellectual property for £6.4m. Samworths also bought selected plant and machinery from Adelie Foods’s Southall factory for £475,000.
Winterbotham Darby: bought all plant and machinery from Adelie’s Redmoor factory for £750,000.
The Real Wrap Company: bought all plant and machinery from Adelie’s Wembley factory for £77,500. The company also bought selected plant and machinery from Adelie’s Southall factory for c.£45,000.
Hollieco Limited (listed as management consultants on Companies House): bought selected plant and machinery from Adelie’s Heathrow facilities for c. £42,500.
According to Deloitte’s report, the sale of chattels from Adelie’s Tamworth, Haydock, Cardiff and Kilmarnock distribution sites have realised £24,000 so far.
A spokesman for Samworth Brothers told Food Manufacture: “Samworth Brothers has acquired the Urban Eat brand from the administrators of Adelie Foods Ltd and Adelie HoldCo UK.
“Samworth Brothers already has a good presence in food-to-go – this gives us the opportunity to develop our proposition further.”
Established in 2010, Urban Eat produces a range of ready-to-eat food products sold in convenience stores across the UK across four ranges, Urban Eat Core, Urban Eat Deli, Roots by Urban Eat and Urban Eat Street.
Already reported as loss-making since 2016, Adelie Foods fell into administration in May. Joint administrators from Deloitte failed to find a buyer for the food business, which resulted in 2,169 redundancies being made.
Among those made redundant were 1,302 employees that had been furloughed under the Government’s Jobs Retention Scheme, for which Deloitte was able to secure grant funds of £1.82m from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.
Insufficient funds
However, Deloitte did not anticipate there being enough funds available to pay the £1.5m owed to employees in unpaid wages, holiday pay and pension contribution.
The 706 underscored creditors – owed more than £23m in total – are also unlikely to see a single penny, due to insufficient floating charge realisations available to even pay preferential creditors in full.
Meanwhile, the global disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic has not dampened merger and acquisition activity in the food and drink industry.
Companies are gearing up their acquisition programmes to achieve better market positions, driven by a spike in demand for domestically produced food during the COVID-19 lockdown, a BDO report claims.