Goodfella's pizza fairy can cast spell for Northern Foods

The food manufacturer's chief executive, Stefan Barden, said the firm was trying to replicate the success it achieved with the relaunch of Fox's biscuits, which lifted it to second place in Britain's biscuit market behind privately owned United Biscuits.

The Goodfella's relaunch includes new recipes and an advertising campaign featuring a "pizza fairy" waiter with wings and a wand.

"We have high hopes for this. We've got more retailer space on the back of the launch and we know the adverts are going down well," said Barden. He added that pizza sales could also get a lift from the football World Cup, which starts this month.

Northern Foods, which has a market for its own-label products from Marks & Spencer to Aldi, posted profit before tax and one-off items of £39.2 million for the 53 weeks to April 3, little changed from the year before.

Sales were broadly steady at £977 million as demand for salads, sandwiches and bakery products offset the firm's planned exit from low-margin frozen foods business.

"Northern Foods has traded solidly in challenging market conditions. We expect these conditions to continue, but we remain well positioned for the future," Barden said.

The group, which also supplies food to British Airways, kept its full-year dividend at 4.5p a share.

Some analysts have said Northern Foods might cut its dividend if it needs to inject more cash into its pension scheme following a triennial valuation in March 2011. However, finance director Simon Herrick said this was not necessarily the case and that there were no plans to cut the payout.

Shares in Northern Foods, which said in April that it was closing a ready meals factory in Wales after failing to agree terms with a key customer, have underperformed the UK food producers' index by about 27% this year.

Today they were flat at 48.25p, outperforming a 1% decline on the UK's mid-cap index and valuing the business at about £225 million pounds.