GRAMPIAN Country Food Group, one of Scotland’s largest privately-owned companies, has delayed posting its annual results because a restructuring designed to plug its pension fund deficit has taken longer than expected to organise.
The Aberdeen-based food giant — which supplies poultry and meat products to supermarket groups including Sainsbury, Asda, Wm Morrison and Marks & Spencer — was due to file its results for the year to the end of May last year to Companies House by 31 March.
However, Eddie Power, Grampian Country Food Group‘s group managing director, said the results can now be expected to be posted “in the next few weeks”.
In February, the company confirmed it was in talks with the Pension Protection Fund in a bid to find a solution to its estimated £300m pension fund deficit.
Power, who took over as managing director last March, said: “Having concluded in December 2006 an agreement in principle to resolve our final salary pensions deficit, discussions concerning the details of implementation are taking somewhat longer than we anticipated, hence today’s announcement. In the meantime we’ve improved the performance of the group and are looking forward to the future with confidence.”
In a statement, Power blamed Grampian’s historically poor trading performance on the unsuccessful plan to centralise its UK operations in Leeds in 2003.
Power said the move, led by former chief executive David Salkeld, had made the business “commercially cumbersome”. Power has already dismantled the centralised organisational structure and devolved responsibility to individual business units.
He closed the Leeds office last summer and opened a trimmed-down UK operational headquarters on the Kirkton Campus, Livingston, West Lothian.
Earlier this week, around 2000 workers at Grampian voted to hold a 24-hour strike in a dispute over pay and pensions.
This article was published in The Herald on 31 March 2007