Norish board to consider sale option

Norish has received an approach that could lead to the sale of the storage and distribution company.

The company said yesterday that discussions were still at a preliminary stage and it would make a further announcement in due course.

The announcement was made following a sharp rise in the Norish share price last week when the stock rose by 17 per cent to €0.88. It gave up three cents yesterday to close at €0.85, giving it a market capitalisation of around €7 million.

The approach is understood to have come from an industry player but Norish declined to name the interested party last night. The talks are being conducted with the Norish board, which is led by executive chairman Mr Ted O'Neill. His appointment in 2003 was widely seen as putting in Norish in play.

The board also includes Norish's finance director, Mr Iain Buntain, and two non-executive directors, former Fruit of the Loom boss Willie McCarter and one of the company's founders, Mr Torgeir Mantor, whose family firm owns 8.5 per cent of Norish.

Norish, which is due to report interim results on September 10th, reported a pre-tax loss of £395,000 (€582,000) last year on turnover of £12.7 million. It has faced a tough trading environment in recent years as overcapacity in the cold-storage area and a prolonged fall in cocoa and coffee stocks hit trading.

Tight cost control and diversification into ambient storage helped trim losses but the company has been the subject of considerable share activity over the past couple of years in anticipation of some form of corporate action.

Among the well-known investors who bought into the company were Mr Ray French snr, formerly of Goodbody Stockbrokers, who took a 5 per cent stake through his Kappa Alpha investment vehicle. Mr Tom Cunningham, another former Goodbody employee, acquired a stake of more than 6 per cent while UK-based property player Mr Robert Noonan bought nearly 4 per cent but has since sold his shares.

Entrepreneur Dr John Teeling is the largest shareholder, with around 10 per cent of the equity. Other large shareholders include Standard Life and Mr O'Neill, who owns 3 per cent.

There was speculation last year that Seán and Anne Murphy, who have cold-storage interests near the border and who took a 4 per cent stake in the company, were interested in buying it.

Norish was founded as a joint venture between Irish and Norwegian investors in 1975 to provide intervention cold storage for the Irish meat industry.

Having disposed of its Irish cold stores in the mid-1990s, all of the company's business interests are now based in Britain.