The FINANCIAL — Peterborough, October 3rd 2011 — Bokomo Foods (UK) Ltd, one of the UK's leading breakfast cereal manufacturers has expanded and introduced £2.4million of new equipment to its Peterborough production facility after agreeing funding with their banking partners NatWest and Lombard, the asset finance provider.
Currently Bokomo are predominantly a private label and contract packer. They provide goods for a number of leading retailers including Asda, Marks & Spencer, Morrison's, Sainsbury's and Tesco. They also manufacture breakfast cereals for various well known companies under their own label brands.
Bokomo UK is owned by the second largest food company in South Africa, Pioneer Foods. As well as specialising in the manufacturer of wheat biscuits, mueslis, granola's and crispy/crunchy oats, they are increasing production of their own brand of products under the Perfekt For Grain, Breakfast Saver and Sunny-Brisk ranges.
Their production is spread across two sites in Wellingborough and Peterborough. This new investment is at their Orton Southgate site which sees a new rolling oven, feeders, coolers and packaging equipment introduced. This provides the company with the capability to increase their production capacity by 250% – helping to meet the demand currently being generated by their major customers.
NatWest have been the company's long term banking partner. They have increased their working capital support and introduced Lombard to fund the new equipment through flexible leasing arrangements.
Talking about the investment, Tim Adams, acting CEO at Bokomo Foods (UK) said: "This substantial investment was required to keep up with the demand we are generating for our products. Healthy eating continues to be a growing market and with breakfast remaining the most important meal of the day we have increased production recently for both our customers private label and our own product ranges. The investment creates additional capacity which will generate additional revenues for the business. The funding through leasing the equipment has made this an attractive proposition for ourselves as we are obtaining the benefit of new equipment without having to eat into any of our cash reserves."
John Luxton, relationship director at NatWest who worked with his colleague Hiten Sonpal at Lombard on the funding lines added: "Bokomo have grown impressively into a £20million plus turnover business. This new investment will put them in a healthy position to extend that further. The additional production capacity generated from the new equipment should provide them with a real competitive advantage as they seek to grow the business."
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