"Organic vegetables box business Abel and Cole has been sold to the makers of Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire puddings, Hull-based William Jackson Group. The deal, for an undisclosed sum but thought to be worth tens of millions of pounds, ends years of uncertainty for the veg box delivery company, which nearly went bust at the height of the financial crisis with consumers unwilling to pay premium prices for organic food. It is the second time the founder, Keith Abel, has sold the company in the last five years. William Jackson, a 180-year-old family-owned business based in Hull, has no plans to lay off any of the 450 staff at Abel and Cole and the company will continue to be run by Abel. He said: "With our new partners we have the security and stability we need to grow and flourish. By joining a family business, which respects and understands us, we can carry on delivering the best veg boxes imaginable to our wonderful customers." Last year the company made a pretax profit of £2.5m on sales of £9.3m, compared with a £13.8m pretax loss in 2010. Abel and Cole managed to turn around disastrous losses of £27m in 2010 to underlying profits of £4.6m in the 12 months to August this year. It is the first time William Jackson has ventured into the organic vegetables market and ends an eight year absence from the retail sector after selling its Jacksons convenience store business to Sainsbury in 2004. Abel started his company in 1988 selling potatoes door-to-door in south Londonand grew it into a multimillion-pound business worth nearly £40m in 2007. He sold a stake to private equity firm Phoenix that year, but profits plunged and in 2010 control of the business passed to Lloyds Banking Group in a debt-for-equity swap. Abel bought back in shortly after and managed to turn the business around again." - Winckel

A pity. Abel & Cole are simply the best, wonderful fruit and veg and wonderful pies. - Winckel

My respect to their strong entrepreneurial spirit for the organic food production and trade ( For me-"organic food"- it was just traditional, for the country, vegetables and fruits, grown under conventional conditions and less interventions -gene,sort,used chemical products. Pity, but do not exist today on our market.) - Slavomira