Terms of the two separate deals were not disclosed, but the companies have a combined turnover of more than £1.1 billion.

FoodVest was formed in 2006 when private equity funds advised by CapVest merged three businesses: UK seafood brand Young’s, Scandinavian frozen food manufacturer Findus and The Seafood Company, which sells smoked salmon, white fish and prawns to UK supermarkets. It is chaired by Seamus Fitzpatrick, a co-founder of CapVest.

The company has 6,000 employees and turned over more than £1 billion in 2007. Lyndon Lea, partner at Lion Capital, calls it ‘one of Europe’s leading food manufacturers’, adding that its brands are ‘household names in the UK, Scandinavia and France’.

Ad van Geloven is the holding company of Mora, a branded producer of frozen snacks and appetisers in the Benelux countries. The company is being sold by Dutch buy-out firm Egeria, under whose ownership it acquired Mora from consumer goods giant Unilever in 2006.

Founded in 1960 in Holland, Ad van Geloven employs 900 people in five factories in the Netherlands and Belgium, and generated sales of €170 million (£135 million) in 2007.