Charnwood Site1 Mar 2024 14:06
" Today we have announced that we will be entering into a consultation on the proposed closure of our Charnwood site in Leicester.
As a branded business, our long-term strategy and focus is on investing behind our brands to deliver sustainable profitable growth, whilst Charnwood manufactures non-branded pizza bases for a small number of less profitable third-party contracts, which are not our strategic focus.
Charnwood has been part of the Group for more than 30 years and has two bespoke pizza base lines, developed in partnership with Pizza Hut, primarily to service their unique requirements. We have explored options to expand the product offering but this would require significant investment to adapt what is quite inflexible infrastructure to bring it in line with modern operational and environmental standards. In addition, we have not been able to agree a profitable, long-term contract with the site’s largest customer, Yum!, which operates the Pizza Hut delivery business. A range of options has been considered including the potential to sell the site as a going concern, which will remain on the table during this process.
The consultation process will start immediately and, should this conclude in the closure of the site, we will exit contracts for all products manufactured there.