Unigate
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Unigate plc. is a British food manufacturer trading under the name Uniq PLC. It was formed in 1959 by the merger of United Dairies with Cow & Gate Limited. Its range included Cow & Gate baby foods (now part of Royal Numico), Farmer’s Wife cream, St Ivel cheese / spreads and more recently, Utterly Butterly. It also had an extensive milk home delivery network.
Until June 1996, it owned the Black-eyed Pea chain of restaurants in the USA. In July 1996, it bought Kraft Foods's spreads division in the UK, including Vitalite.
By the late 1990’s, the decline in doorstep deliveries and fierce price pressure from supermarkets led to mounting losses and in 2000 the milk and cheese division was merged with Dairy Crest, with the latter having majority holding. Unigate now concentrates on chilled and convenience foods and changed its name to Uniq in July 2000, based in Gerrards Cross in Buckinghamshire. It sold its yoghurt and dairy divisions to raise money to concentrate on the convenience chilled market.
[edit] Production sites
The company has sites in Annan in Scotland (produces most of the UK's Scottish salmon), Spalding (prepared salads), Northampton, Evercreech (former St Ivel site), Minsterley in Shropshire (former site of Northern Foods until May 2004) and Paignton (produces all of Cadbury's chilled desserts such as chocolate mousses). The Northampton site produces most of Marks & Spencers' prepared sandwiches.
