AGM Trading Statement

14/05/2004

At the Company’s Annual General Meeting, Stephen Roper, Chairman, made the following statement.

“At the time of our Preliminary Results in March I expressed confidence in the future prospects of the Group. This confidence was based on our expectation that we would grow our sales to hotel and hospitality customers, increase our focus on key volume market retail chains and realise the benefits of the restructuring we completed at the end of 2003. I am pleased to report that in the year to date we have continued to make progress in all these areas. The sale of products into hotel and hospitality markets is well ahead of the corresponding period in 2003 and whilst overall sales to retail customers have fallen following the reduction in capacity implemented in 2003, sales of sourced products to target accounts are also significantly ahead of last year.

At this early stage of the year, the Board is confident that the Group will meet its targets. We look forward to reporting further progress against these objectives at our Interim Results announcement in August”