New Issues Examined by Ben Jaglom

Expected to soon join AIM is New World Oil & Gas, an investment company looking to raise £3 million to help fund investments in the oil and gas sector. Led by William Kelleher with a board including Georges and Petro Szytk, the group is planning to identify ‘acquisition and investment opportunities’ in areas that are ‘underperforming, undeveloped and/or unquoted’, with a particular interest in the Yucatan Peninsula of Central America. Led by the team behind AIM-quoted oil and gas explorer Victoria Oil and Gas, it is certainly one to keep an eye on.

Having announced last year that Africa Aura Mining would be splitting off its business into its gold and iron divisions, April saw the gold mining part of the newly formed Aureus Mining join AIM.

Aureus, which took on Africa Aura’s gold projects in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Cameroon, together with a 14 per cent stake in Stellar Diamonds and 40 per cent of Africa Aura’s cash, joined the junior market with a market capitalisation of £100 million. In the other direction, the newly formed Afferro Mining focused on iron exploration projects in Cameroon and Liberia.

Aureus is led by mining veteran David Reading, a former CEO of European Goldfields and the previous head of African exploration for the fully listed Randgold Resources. Aureus also listed simultaneously on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Main market migrants
In addition to the new issues joining AIM there are also a number of migrations to the junior market. Moving from the main market to AIM is the delightful dessert maker Uniq, which is perhaps best known in the City for making the takeaway lunchtime desserts sold at Marks & Spencer.

The food group, which makes a range of sandwiches and salads in addition to its dessert range, supplies treats that include trifles sold at its site at Evercreech, Somerset, and Minsterley, Shrewsbury, in addition to the ‘Cadbury Twinpots’ sold under licence for its customer Müller and a number of different ‘layered desserts’ such as the Walnut Whip and Turkish Delight, both sold to Marks & Spencer.

Meanwhile, its salad division, which prepares the salads at Spalding through its ‘Smedley’s Salads’ business, has a particular proficiency in coleslaw, with its websites enthusing that ‘when it comes to making coleslaw, we believe Smedley’s are the experts’. Although Spalding is a long way from Morocco or Italy, it also prepares couscous and pasta salads, with the Smedley’s business itself dating back to the 1920s.

Taking the wrap
Finally, its ‘sandwiches’ division, which in addition to the obvious produces a range of wraps including the chicken fajita and the healthier ‘Japanese radish’, operates from its Northampton base. According to the cheerful company motto, the sandwiches division looks to ‘wow’, ‘win’, ‘contribute’, ‘adapt’, ‘innovate’ and ‘engage’, with there certainly being no lack of enthusiasm from Uniq, which has similar ‘values’ on each of its divisions’ pages.

While the financial services and technology sectors get understandable coverage in Britain, it is not generally as well known that this country is a leader in the area of prepared chilled food, perhaps as it is not seen as being as exciting as the aforementioned sectors.

In its most recent results for the year to December, Uniq declared a paring of losses from £18.9 million to £11.2 million on turnover up from £287.2 million to £311.9 million. Joining a rather thin food producer sector that is not particularly well represented on the junior market, Uniq should need little more than to remind City workers of its desserts to capture the attention of analysts.