IT’S worrying when the business you work for is sold over your head into new ownership – particularly in an industry as dependent on meat prices, and so with such a rollercoaster ride of profitability, as Norton’s bacon factory.
So I just wanted to say, for what it’s worth, that it’s very heartening to me that the management buy-out of the bacon factory, and the rest of Vion’s UK and Ireland bacon business, announced last Thursday, has been backed by Endless.
Endless is a Yorkshire-grown, Leeds-based, investor which has grown from nothing in a very few years into one of the biggest venture capital operators in the country. It has done so by making a string of spectacularly shrewd investments.
Nobody’s perfect (and I know nothing at all of Vion’s management, or intentions) but if Endless has chosen to risk millions in backing this management buy-out team, it will have been for very good reason, and it will have been with a view to nurturing the business and growing it.
The history of past investments by Endless suggests that this is solidly good news for the Norton bacon factory.
Dick Jennings Malton
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