Greencore, which makes more than 700m sandwiches in the UK, says it is building stocks of raw materials in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Speaking at the Food Manufacture Nusiness Leaders Forum this week, Greencore CEO Patrick Coveney said that in order to give the company the best chance to be able to manage its way through any disruption to the fresh food chain, it was working hard on securing the ingredients it needs.

Alternatives

He also said it was working with customers (which includes Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s) to offer alternatives to ingredients that could become difficult to source in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

He highlighted spinach and rocket as two ingredients, due to their seasonality and reliance of being grown outside the UK, that could become scarce.

Greencore reported an encouraging start to its financial year

He said that the food industry should be able to manage with a disruption of three to four weeks after Brexit, but that if it extended to three or four months the industry would have to look at different ways of getting raw materials into the country.

His comments comes as Greencore reported an encouraging start to its financial year, seeing sales increase almost 6% (post-disposals) to £363m in the first quarter to 28 December 2018.

Tender offer

The UK’s largest sandwich maker also saw a full take-up of its tender offer where it will buy back shares to the value of £509m following the sale of its US business last year for $1.07bn.

This represents almost 37% of the issued ordinary share capital of the company.

Shareholders who tendered ordinary shares equal to or less than their basic entitlement will have their tender accepted in full.

It is anticipated that the proceeds will be dispatched to shareholders by no later than 7 February 2019 in the form of a cheque.