NORTHERN Foods, which owns the doomed Evesham Foods factory, has revealed it expects full year profits to be £6m lower than the previous 12 months.

Northern, which announced it is to make around 400 workers in the town redundant later this year, put the loss down to poor sales to Marks & Spencer.

The company, which makes Dalepak frozen foods, Goodfellas pizzas and Fox's biscuits, said profits for the year to March 31 were expected to come in at £80m against £86m for 2003-04.

"The more difficult Christmas trading and the continuing tough business environment has led to the expectations of lower annual profits before tax and one-off items," said a spokesman.

"But although the market place remains challenging and highly competitive, we are confident the actions already taken and those planned will have medium and long-term benefits for the group."

Among the "actions" taken is the planned shutdown of two pastry plants at Evesham and Carlisle, Cumbria, with an estimated 1,060 job losses.