Electric Business

Dairy Crest has sold its Dairies operations, including bulk butter manufacture, to Muller for £80m. Dairy Crest’s Dairies division processes and delivers 1.3 billion litres of British milk to retailers and residential customers every year. It also includes the FRijj milkshake brand, flavoured milk, cream, bulk butter and milk powders. Dairy Crest will now focus on its branded cheese and spreads products.

Proximity Communications has been taken over by the telecoms and data managed services company Maintel for £9.6m. Proximity is a unified communications and managed services provider.

The specialist plastics products manufacturer Plastics Capital has acquired Flexipol Packaging for £10.6m. Established in 1994, Flexipol Packaging manufactures packaging for retailers such as Marks & Spencer.

Impellam Group, a provider of staffing solutions, business process and recruitment outsourcing, has acquired Lorien for an initial cash payment of £22.3m. Established in 1977, Lorien specialises in IT recruitment and has offices in London, Leeds, Manchester and Edinburgh. The deal means Impellam is now the UK’s second largest staffing company.

United Biscuits has been bought by the Turkish food company Yildiz. United Biscuits owns the snack and biscuit brands Twiglets, Hula Hoops, Jacob's, Penguin, McCoy's, KP, Carr's and McVitie's Jaffa Cakes. It operates seven manufacturing facilities in the UK.

Rolls-Royce is to cut a further 2,600 jobs over the next 18 months, mainly in its Aerospace division. The engine maker says that the cuts would result in restructuring costs of around £120m over the next two years and achieve annualised cost benefits of around £80m when fully implemented. Rolls-Royce also announced the departure of its long-serving chief financial officer, Mark Morris.

Greene King continues to push forward with its expansion into the retail sector with the acquisition of Spirit Pub Company. The £774m deal creates the UK’s leading managed pub operator, with a portfolio of over 1,800 pubs. Spirit’s managed division consists of 794 pubs operating under five brands: Chef & Brewer, Fayre & Square, John Barras, Flaming Grill and Taylor Walker.

A management buyout backed by the private equity firm Endless, has been completed The Book People. Established in 1988, The Book People is a £96m turnover online book retailer.

Gorkana Group, a company which specialises in multi-channel media monitoring and PR measurement services, has been acquired by the American PR, social software and insight services provider Cision. The Gorkana brand will be retained.

The Formula 1 field has been reduced to nine teams following the news that the Marussia and Caterham teams have gone into administration. Caterham was sold by businessman Tony Fernandes to a consortium of Swiss and Middle Eastern investors earlier this year, however this has not prevented it sliding into further difficulties. Both UK-based teams have had little success since they entered the sport in 2010, with the best result between them a 9th place at the 2014 Monaco Grand Prix from Marussia’s Jules Bianchi. The last Formula 1 team to withdraw from the sport was the Spanish outfit HRT in