Employees of a Colchester catering company providing meals to more than 20,000 NHS patients could be heading for a bonanza payout when the company floats in the next five years.

Taste of success - Anglia Crown managing director Neil Kirk with staff Sonya-Jayne Mills and Ken Moreton. Picture: NIGEL BROWN (19617-6)

They work for Anglia Crown which launched a share option scheme in April last year as a reward for outstanding employees.

So far, 25 of the company's 150 staff have been chosen for the award. Another ten are currently being considered for an April distribution.

The firm - formed nearly nine years ago by a team of NHS catering managers - supplies ready meals to 91 hospitals nationwide. They include a number in Colchester and other parts of Essex.

As well as its headquarters in Colchester Business Park, the company has a distribution plant in Manchester.

The company adopted the share option scheme, known as the Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI), after it was launched by Chancellor Gordon Brown to promote worker partnership in small and medium-size businesses.

The options can be exercised as soon as a company is publicly floated. Sold shares only attract ten per cent tax.

Anglia Crown is planning to float in the next three to five years. Managing director Neil Kirk said: "The partnership within the company has been forged on our directors' past experience in the NHS and elsewhere.

"We believe that the greater the reward the greater the employee commitment to the company. It seems to have worked well so far."

He dismissed suggestions that share options were dirty words after the losses suffered by employee shareholders at the Enron Corporation which collapsed in the United States.

Said Mr Kirk: "Their employees were encouraged to invest their savings directly in the company. Our share options cost our employees nothing until we float and until they decide to exercise them."

Anglia Crown has to compete with other caterers for health trust contracts. Added Mr Kirk: "It means we have to be extremely cost-efficient while maintaining standards. We aim to continue to be successful at both.

Published Thursday, February 21, 2002