founded 1959 headquarters gerrards cross uk key people ross warburton chairman geoff eaton ceo revenue 736.1 million 2007 operating income 3.6 million 2007 net income 41.7 million 2007 number of employees 6 559 2007 parent greencore website www.uniq.com uniq plc formerly unigate plc was a british food manufacturer . listed on the london stock exchange and once a constituent of the ftse 100 index it was taken over by irish foods conglomerate greencore in 2011 . contents 1 history 2 operations 3 references 4 external links history edit the company was formed in 1959 by the merger of the uk s largest dairy products company united dairies with cow & gate earlier known as the west surrey central dairy company 1 forming unigate . on merger aside from its extensive milk home delivery network its range of food products included cow & gate baby foods now part of royal numico and farmer s wife cream . it also developed st ivel cheese spreads and utterly butterly . in 1963 unigate acquired midland counties dairies but as milk consumption levelled and then started to decline in the 1960s it began diversifying into non dairy businesses . it began by buying up grocery stores and restaurants and by the 1970s bought supermarket chain kibby s quids in clothing shops uni wash laundrettes and some kentucky fried chicken franchises . in 1973 it acquired scot bowyers a meat processing company scot bowyers in 1975 united states based italian cheese manufacturer frigo and in 1978 us specialty cheesemaker gardenia . in 1977 dairyman john clement became ceo and chairman . to stop the decline in the dairy business he sold 75 % of its dairy manufacturing businesses to the nationalised company the milk marketing board for 87 million . after paying off debt unigate acquired 1981 moving company giltspur ; turners turkeys ; us based mexican food chain casa bonita 1984 poultry processor j.p. wood 1985 arlington motor holdings and in colchester car auctions both added to subsidiary wincanton transport 1986 prufrock which specialized in southern style food through the black eyed pea chain of restaurants 2 but the diversification didn t pay off and in the late 1980s the project was reversed . by the end of the decade despite unigate remaining the uk s biggest milk supplier dairy products only made up one third of group turnover . with losses mounting and debt rising clement was replaced in both board positions by the end of 1991 . in the following decade unigate focused on food and distribution selling off non core and unprofitable businesses which raised 700 million . half of this came through the 332 million sale of its share in nutricia the holding company that owned the cow & gate brand . the company also bought brands to supplement its new direction spending 400 million on french firms prodipal a maker of yogurts and desserts and vedial a maker of spreads . in september 1996 unigate paid 77.25 million for the uk and italian margarine and spreads business of kraft foods international including vitalite . 3 in may 1998 the company attempted an unsuccessful 1.59 billion takeover of diversified conglomerate hillsdown holdings . in february 1999 the company did acquire fisher quality foods a uk supplier of sauces dressings and marinades from the albert fisher group plc for 43 million . in the meantime hillsdown under shareholder pressure had begun a break up spinning off its chilled convenience food subsidiary as terranova . in march 1999 unigate initiated a hostile 228.5 million takeover bid for terranova which was accepted after the bid was raised to 274 million . but by the late 1990s the decline in doorstep deliveries and price pressure from supermarkets led to mounting losses and in 2000 the milk and cheese division was sold to dairy crest . 4 on completion of the sale the company changed its name to uniq in july 2000 . 5 in 2001 it demerged wincanton its logistics subsidiary by way of an initial public offering . 1 it sold its yoghurt business in 2002 to raise money to concentrate on the convenience foods market . 6 in march 2009 uniq reached an agreement for the sale of its uk chilled fish business pinneys of scotland to the seafood company ltd part of the foodvest group . 7 on 12 july 2011 greencore announced it intended to buy uniq . 8 the deal was completed in november 2011 and uniq is now subsumed within the operations of greencore . operations edit dairy crest took over the unigate home delivery business including its wales & edwards rangemaster milk floats . the company has sites in spalding smedleys salads 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 and morrisons prepared sandwiches . references edit a b history & business . wincanton plc. archived from the original on june 9 2008 . retrieved 2008 04 26 . unigate of britain sells us restaurant chain . new york times . 1996 06 04 . retrieved 2009 01 03 . unigate fattens up for unilever spreads battle . http www.marketingmagazine.co.uk . marketing magazine . retrieved 2 july 2014 . external link in website help shah saeed 2000 02 19 . unigate sells its milk operations to dairy crest for 220m . london independent . retrieved 2009 01 03 . unigate becomes uniq . eurofood . 2000 . retrieved 2009 01 03 . uniq sells shape brand to danone for 32m . independent . retrieved 2009 01 03 . dead link uniq sell uk chilled fish business pinneys of scotland . flex news . archived from the original on march 7 2009 . retrieved 2009 08 04 . greencore agrees 113m uniq takeover . financial times . 12 july 2011 . external links edit official site retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title uniq plc & oldid 738440069 categories dairy products companies of the united kingdomcompanies based in buckinghamshirecompanies established in 1959food manufacturers of the united kingdomcompanies disestablished in 2011companies formerly listed on the london stock exchangehidden categories cs1 errors external linksall articles with dead external linksarticles with dead external links from october 2010 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages deutsch edit links this page was last modified on 8 september 2016 at 23 53 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the 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