Wine company takeover fails at the 11th hour

The takeover of Broadland Wineries by the British arm of India's biggest wine producer has fallen at the final hurdle.

It is understood that Indage UK was unable to raise the funds needed to buy 100pc of the Cawston-based winery.

Yesterday Mark Lansley, chief executive of Broadland Wineries, said negotiations had come to an end as "certain contractual obligations could not be met".

But Mr Lansley said the future for the company was bright in the light of rising sales, winning business from the supermarkets and returning to profitability.

He revealed that Broadland Wineries had won a new contract to bottle Asda's own-brand wines - a contract the company had held prior to entering administration in March 2006 amid concerns over its trading losses.

The firm, which has a 75-strong workforce, emerged from administration in early 2007 under a company voluntary arrangement - a private agreement between the company and its creditors.

It is understood that the deal

with Indage would have seen speedier repayment of the wineries debts.

Mr Lansley said: "Sales are up

25pc from £8m to £10m in 2008

and I expect that sales will reach £11m this year.

"There are two parts to our business - producing and contract packing of imported wine.

"In terms of contract packing, the economic drivers behind that are strong.

"It saves importers money and there's an environmental benefit to packing in the UK rather than shipping bottled stock from Australia, for example.

"We've also won back the Asda bottling contract we lost when we went into administration.

"Now, with the euro being at parity with the pound, it also means it's viable to pack some European

wines in the UK, so we'll be looking at that.

"We run a pretty tight ship, so we're well positioned, with a skilled workforce and low staff turnover. We'll just continue growing at a steady rate.

"In terms of the fermented wines we make, we've launched our own brand, Belgars, and sold 50,000 cases of our mulled wines to Tesco in the run up to Christmas.

"We've also got a number of projects with supermarkets, where we're looking to sell direct."