Noon adds spice to Kerry mix

Most 69-year-old men, especially the few who are still working, would spend their summer holiday relaxing by a pool or working on their handicap. Not Sir Gulam Noon. He's climbing the peaks, stalking the stag and shooting the grouse in the wilds of Scotland.

"It was the fire in my belly that brought me over here in the first place, and it is that that's still keeping me going now," says the Indian-born entrepreneur, who proudly claims to have played a significant part in making Indian food hugely popular in the UK. "I don't deny it," he says. "I plead guilty to making chicken tikka masala a national dish in Britain."

Noon Products, the company Noon set up 16 years ago in west London after tasting what he described as an "insipid dish masquerading as an Indian curry" from a British supermarket, was last week sold to Kerry Group for almost €180 million. The buyout will allow Noon Products, which makes prepackaged ready-made Indian, Thai and Mexican food for UK supermarkets, to expand beyond the realm of its core business.

Nothing will change at the company, which last year had revenue of £86 million (€125 million), says Noon. The existing management will remain in place, and he will continue as chairman, in what he describes as a more ambassadorial role.

"The company will continue operating in the same way, but our new position gives us tremendous opportunity to grow the business further."

According to Noon, the group plans to use Kerry's profile as a food manufacturer, and its new parent's existing marketing strategy, to help expand the reach of its own products. "We wanted a buyer that would take us further, and in Kerry we have found that," he says.

Despite being born in India, Noon describes himself as a "quintessential Londoner", loving everything about the UK and all the opportunities it has afforded him. He arrived 35 years ago after an earlier holiday to London had left him with "an urge to return". At the age of eight he inherited his father's confectionary business in Bombay and worked in the shop alongside his school studies.

He eventually decided the business had more potential and so he moved to London, where he opened a shop selling Indian confectionary under the name Bombay Halwa in Southall, a western suburb. He now has 49 shops and sells Indian sweets, which Noon likens to English fudge, and Indian ice cream under the brand name Royal. Bombay Halwa also supplies confectionary to several airlines for in-flight catering and is about to sign another deal with a large Middle Eastern airline. He recently added a new factory to accommodate expansion in this part of the business.

Since founding Noon Products in 1989, Noon has grown the business from one factory with a workforce of 11 people making three products - chicken korma, beef rogan josh and chicken tikka masala - to a business that employs more than 1,000 people. It generated £6 million in pre-tax profit last year. The company today makes more than a quarter of a million curries each day and has expanded its range to about 100 dishes. Chicken tikka masala is still the most popular, according to Noon.

Ten years after its birth, Noon sold Noon Products to WT Group, a speciality supplier of ethnic foods. Two years later it was sold again, this time to members of its own management team and the private equity group Bridgepoint Capital. According to its new owner, Kerry chief executive Hugh Friel, Noon Products fits in well with Kerry's own ready-made meals business, Rye Valley Foods, and will give the Irish company a better chance of taking a bigger chunk of the UK's chilled ready-made market, which is valued at £1.4 billion and is still growing.

As well as his business interests - he has retained his 4 per cent stake in WT Foods - Noon openly supports the Labour Party, having appeared on their financial donor register in the run-up to the last two elections. "New Labour has done wonderful things for business," says Noon, citing high employment and low inflation. "It makes the UK a great place to do business."

Having no official higher education in his teens, he has since been awarded honorary degrees from several British universities and in 2002 was knighted in the Queen's birthday honours list for services to industry. He also received an MBE in 1996.

Worth an estimated £50 million, Noon founded his own charity in 1995 with a £4 million donation from his personal assets. The Noon Foundation gives grants to a range of multi-faith and multicultural projects in the UK and India.

He is also an active fundraiser for the Prince's Trust and is on the board of Cancer Research UK, the British Food Trust and the Arpana Charitable Trust, which raises money for the underprivileged in rural India.

Asked whether as an Indian Muslim living in the UK he feels threatened by the recent attacks on London, he declares a strong allegiance with the UK authorities, complimenting them on their handling of the situation, and even pledges his support for the return of the crime of treason. "It is simple," he says. "If you do not love the country then don't go there. And if are living in a country other than your own you must follow the rules of that country." Noon was one of several prominent Muslims called to meet with prime minister Tony Blair and the leaders of the opposition parties in the wake of the terrorist incidents in London last month and says he is keen to promote as much interaction as possible between different communities.

So it is clear Noon loves London and the UK, but what does Ireland mean for him? "It is part of the great opportunity that is Europe," he says, acknowledging that until recently Indian food was not very popular in Europe outside of the UK. "Curry is just surfacing in Europe now and is becoming an acceptable cuisine," he says. "The potential for us is vast."