Samworth Brothers buys sandwich brand Urban Eat sandwich following collapse of Adelie

British food manufacturer Samworth Brothers has bought sandwich brand Ubran Eat after its private equity owner Adelie collapsed.

The Ginsters and Soreen owner paid £6.4m for the brand, after Adelie called in administrators Deloitte in May due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Almost 70 potential buyers were confirmed to have been close to sealing a deal in buying the business before the decision was taken to sell off company assets.

Adelie, which was the UK’s third biggest sandwich maker, saw their demand for retail food-to-go rapidly decline after their contracts with McColl’s, Aldi, Caffè Nero and Shell were cancelled.

The company also reported a£9.3 million loss during their 2019/20 financial year, with sales during the pandemic falling from three million products a week to around 800,000.

Nearly 2,200 employees were made redundant in June, who will now have to rely on the government’s redundancy payments service to receive some of the £1.5m owed.

The Urban Eat range, which is available in convenience stores, coffee shops and cafés, was sold to Samworth for £6.4m in the asset sell-off.

Factory assets from Adelie’s Southall site have since been sold to five different buyers for £1.4 million, including Samworth for £475,000 and Winterbotham Darby bought equipment from the Redmoor plant for £750,000.

The Real Wrap Co also bought equipment totalling around £120,000.