Premier Foods outsources SAP support to Wipro
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Amid financial woes, the UK company behind Mr Kipling and Hovis has outsourced supply chain application support and development to India
Premier Foods, the company behind Mr Kipling pastries and Hovis bread, has outsourced support and development for its SAP supply chain applications to Indian IT services provider Wipro.
Mark Vickery, the information services and change director at Premier Foods, said that the Indian company's "strong SAP capabilities along with their deep [consumer packaged goods] domain expertise made Wipro a natural fit for Premier Foods".
Premier Foods has struggled financially in recents year. In the first of half of this year, the company reported a 1% decline in sales. Among the reasons it gave for this was that a "successful pricing excericse", i.e. putting up its prices, prompted Tesco to cease stocking many of its products.
In October, the company issued a profit warning, and the company is reportedly struggling to keep up with repayments on its £850 million of debts. Today, Premier Foods was granted an repayments extension by its banks to get its finances in order.
The deal announced today was first alluded to in Wipro's financial statement for the quarter ending June 30 2011, when Wipro noted winning a contract with a nameless UK food company.
