Avenance scoops £5m CGNU contract

Contract catering firm Avenance has won a five-year contract to supply catering and vending services to insurance giant CGNU, which will turn over £5m a year.

The contract will kick off on 6 August and will see Avenance supplying all 30 CGNU offices around the country.

The insurer, formed through the merger of Norwich Union and Commercial General in March last year, employs some 17,000 people.

Nelson Hind, now part of Avenance, has been serving the group's Norwich headquarters since 1993, along with eight other sites.

The contract was previously split between Nelson Hind, Eurest Sutcliffe and Sodexho, with Sodexho holding the lion's share.

Andrew Wilson, sales and marketing director for Avenance, said the company would be looking to radically update the catering offered to staff.

One of the challenges of the contract was to service a large number of small offices, often employing no more than 150 people, he added. The largest site, the Norwich head office, employs about 4,500 people.

A spokeswoman for Sodexho confirmed it had lost the contract to Avenance.

Chris Dady, head of UK facilities at CGNU, said the new catering contract had been an inevitable by-product of the merger between the two firms. "This supports our approach of rationalising our supplier base," he said.

by Nic Paton