By Mark Kleinman, City Editor
The FTSE-100 group which owns Primark, the thriving clothing retailer, is examining a £250m takeover bid for Tilda, one of Britain's most popular food brands.
Sky News has learnt that Associated British Foods (ABF) has registered an interest in buying Tilda, which has been put up for sale by its founding shareholders.
ABF, a conglomerate which owns businesses such as Allied Bakeries, Silver Spoon sugars, Twinings Tea and Ovaltine, is understood to be interested in adding Tilda to its fast-growing collection of ethnic food assets.
The company's Westmill Foods division is home to brands such as Green Dragon, a maker of Thai rice products, and the Amoy range of sauces.
Members of the Thakrar family which controls Tilda are examining a sale of part of all of the company more than four decades after they arrived in Britain, having fled the Ugandan regime of Idi Amin.
Tilda, which is stocked by all of the major supermarket chains and has a huge share of the retail trade in packaged rice, has appointed investment bankers at Rothschild to oversee the auction, which is said to be in its second phase.
ABF is by no means the only bidder, with insiders suggesting that Tilda has attracted strong interest from trade buyers and private equity groups.
A source close to the Primark owner acknowledged its interest but said it would be disciplined about not overpaying for acquisitions.
The Spanish food company Ebro and Mars, which owns Uncle Ben's rice, have been named by analysts as other likely bidders for Tilda, with the price-tag expected to be in the region of £250m.
A sale at that price would cap a remarkable success story for the Thakrars, who arrived in north London in the early 1970s cleaning and packing rice and pulses after their expulsion from Uganda by Idi Amin's regime.
They focused the company initially on targeting sales within the UK's fast-growing community of immigrants from India and Bangladesh but quickly realised the much broader potential demand.
Now employing 200 people in the UK, Tilda has grown so ambitiously that six years ago it began exporting its rice products to India, one of the world's most voracious consumers of the food.
The Thakrars identified an opportunity to build their business in India amid changing consumption and buying habits in the world's second most populous nation.
Tilda is expected to make earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of roughly £25m this year, with food companies often trading at multiples of about ten times their annual profits.
Spokespeople for ABF and Tilda declined to comment.
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