Birds Eye up for sale with price tag of £2.5bn

FROZEN food business Birds Eye is believed to have been put up for sale by private equity firm Permira with a price tag of up to £2.5 billion.

Iglo Group, which owns Birds Eye and the Italian arm of fellow frozen food specialist Findus, is understood to have been placed on the auction block following several approaches.

Permira bought Iglo for €1.7 billion (about £1.4bn) in 2006 from Unilever and expanded the business by buying Findus Italy for €800 million in 2010.

Buy-out rivals such as Blackstone, BC Partners and Cinven are expected to participate in the auction.

Iglo makes pea, poultry and potato products at Lowestoft, in Suffolk, and has operations at Bremerhaven and Reken in Germany and Cisterna in Italy.

The company is run by Martin Glenn, who is credited with revitalising the Walkers crisps brand in his time at PepsiCo, signing up former England football captain Gary Lineker to promote the potato snacks.

Iglo sales in 2011 are thought to have beaten the €1.1bn recorded the previous year, helped by the targeting of new markets such as Russia and Turkey.

Birds Eye’s advertisements have swapped the image of its long-serving crusty sea-dog captain for a cuddly white polar bear that offers tips to cooks on how to use its frozen produce.

The rest of the Findus business remains based in the UK and also owns the Seafood Company and Young’s brands. Findus is owned by Lion Capital.