Hibernia Foods, the Nasdaq listed consumer foods group, is to expand its chilled desserts business with the acquisition of the British group, La Boheme.

Hibernia has not disclosed how much it is paying for La Boheme, but the British group had sales last year of £12.5 million sterling (€20 million).

In its statement, Hibernia said that it will be paying cash for La Boheme, but that further details of the deal will not be revealed until it is completed by the end of the month.

La Boheme's chilled desserts business had sales last year of £10 million sterling and supplies Tesco with hand-filled chilled patisserie products.

Hibernia's Entenmanns subsidiary already supplies Tesco with private label frozen desserts.

Hibernia is also acquiring La Boheme's frozen desserts business, which had sales last year of £2.4 million sterling.

The planned acquisition was announced with Hibernia's third-quarter results which showed a 5 per cent increase in sales to £33.1 million.

But Hibernia suffered a sharp fall in its margins with gross profits falling from £7 million to £4.8 million.

With expenses rising from £4.6 million to £5.8 million, this meant that the group moved from an operating profit in third quarter 2000 of £2.4 million to an operating loss of £1 million.

Interest charges converted an after-tax third quarter profit of £473,000 to a loss of £2.28 million.