A foul time for Britain’s chicken king, Ranjit Singh Boparan

Ranjit Singh Boparan built Britain’s second-largest food empire from scratch. But an undercover film has shone an unwelcome spotlight on the business.

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"Chicken king" Ranjit Singh Boparan
(Image credit: Copyright (c) 2014 Shutterstock. No use without permission.)

The furore over supermarkets supplier 2 Sisters Food Group has cast an unwelcome spotlight on "chicken king" Ranjit Singh Boparan, says the Evening Standard. The West Midlands food tycoon has built Britain's second-largest food empire from scratch while zealously guarding his own privacy. Boparan's company, known in the trade as 2SFG, reportedly produces one-third of all poultry products consumed in Britain. But after an undercover film revealed a spate of horrors from poor hygiene standards to the fiddling of food-safety dates all hell has broken loose.

Born in 1966 in Bilston in the West Midlands he still lives nearby Boparan left school at 16 with few qualifications and began his career in a butcher's shop in Birmingham. He founded 2 Sisters in 1993 with a small bank loan, says The Observer. The company, co-owned and run with his wife Baljinder, grew to become a favoured supplier of supermarkets.

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The deal that really put him on the map, though, was the 2011 acquisition of Northern Foods, one of Britain's biggest food suppliers, which had fallen on hard times. The £342m transaction was "the biggest deal of his life" to date, and it doubled sales to £2bn. Northern became the template for a raft of future deals involving struggling food businesses, says the Financial Times. Last year saw him "gobbling up" turkey producer Bernard Matthews a deal that proved controversial because it involved "taking on the group's assets without its liabilities", including pension obligations. He has the reputation of being a tough negotiator. "You don't often come out the right side of the deal with him," notes one industry veteran.

Boparan's sprawling privately held interests, owned via a variety of different vehicles, "have propelled him into the business elite", says The Guardian. He and Baljinder have made an estimated £544m fortune, according to The Sunday Times. They've had their troubles their son, Antonio, has twice been jailed (for dangerous driving in a crash that left a baby brain-damaged and for actual bodily harm in a brawl). But people who know Boparan describe him as a down-to-earth grafter. "He doesn't own fancy yachts or drive fast cars. You couldn't find someone more straightforward," a colleague told The Observer in 2011. That claim is now being put to the test.

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