M&S food supplier Uniq reported better sandwich sales and reduced losses in desserts today as it gears up for its takeover by food firm Greencore.

Underlying profits rose by 47% to £4.7m in the half year to June 30 after Food to Go sales rose by 9%, offsetting an 8% fall on the desserts side.

Uniq’s 1,900 workforce makes sandwiches from a site in Northampton, salads at Spalding and desserts at Evercreech, Somerset and Minsterley in Shropshire.

It is now 90.2% owned by its pension fund after a deal that saw £436m of liabilities swapped for shares in the Buckinghamshire-based firm, which is the last remaining part of dairy giant Unigate.

 

The conglomerate once boasted 30,000 staff in the UK, Europe and North America but its dairy business was sold to Dairy Crest in 2000 before its logistics business Wincanton was demerged a year later.

Greencore, which employs 7,000 people and has 20 sites in the UK, Ireland and the United States, announced in July that it planned to buy Uniq in order to bolster its scale in the food-to-go and chilled desserts categories.

The Office of Fair Trading is looking at the deal with a decision expected by the end of the month.

Uniq said today that profits at Food to Go, which includes sandwiches and salads for the Co-op and coffee chain Costa as well as M&S, rose to £5.8m from £5m, offset by losses of £1.1m in desserts.