Buyer may be on the horizon for ailing Durham-based Peters Bakery (From Durham Times)
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Buyer may be on the horizon for ailing Durham-based Peters Bakery
8:00am Saturday 16th June 2012 in News
By Mark Tallentire, Reporter (Durham)
A Peters Bakery shop in Durham
ADMINISTRATORS trying to find a buyer for a troubled bakery where more than 400 jobs are at risk say there has been some interest in the company.
Durham City-based Peters Bakery, which has 58 stores in the region, called in administrator KPMG on Tuesday.
KPMG said it expected to confirm a number of redundancies “in the coming days”.
Yesterday, a spokeswoman said there had been some interest in the business but stressed this was at a very early stage.
KPMG officials are anxious not to raise false hopes among the workforce.
Unions say no deadline for finding a buyer has been announced but KPMG will review the situation weekly.
On Tuesday, Mark Firmin, KPMG’s northern head of restructuring and joint administrator, said the firm would continue to trade while it sought a buyer and assessed all aspects of the business.
Meanwhile, Roberta Blackman- Woods, MP for Durham City, held talks with KPMG and Business Durham yesterday to discuss Peters’ future and what could be done to help its 403 workers.
Afterwards, the MP said the likelihood of a buyer being found would become clear in the next few weeks. “I know that this is an extremely worrying time for all of the people who work at Peters and I would like to assure them that all possible routes are being explored,” she said.
Dr Blackman-Woods also said she hoped to meet staff representatives soon and would keep in close contact with KPMG.
She also said she wanted to meet Durham County Council to discuss measures to support the area’s high streets as well as Dragonville industrial estate, and pledged to push the Government to do more to support high street businesses.
On Wednesday, Usdaw said a closure-threatened Kerry Foods plant nearby would shut next month, with the loss of all but a handful of its 350 jobs.
Peters, founded in Belmont, Durham, in 1966, has an annual turnover of £12m, contracts with leading supermarkets, a direct mobile sales operation and employs 103 people in its Dragonville head office and factory and 300 more across its branches.
