CONVENIENCE foods group Uniq is cutting 300 jobs as part of plans to save more than £20m a year.

About 100 jobs will go in the UK and the remainder in Northern Europe after Uniq saw pre-tax losses widen to £70.6m from £15.6m in the year to March 31.

Many of the cuts in the UK will take place at its head office in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire.

Uniq announced a strategic overhaul in March that included a change of chief executive and the abandonment of its strategy of seeking to build a pan-European chilled foods business.

Yesterday's announcement was the first time that Uniq has said precisely how it will achieve a target of at least £6m of savings in the 2005/2006 financial year, growing to £20m a year by 2007/2008.

Uniq supplies sandwiches and other products to retailers that include Marks & Spencer, employing 4,000 people in the UK and 5,000 in mainland Europe.

The overhaul was agreed during the five months in which the company was the subject of takeover interest. Bid talks - thought to be with a private equity firm - collapsed in March amid concerns about the impact of an estimated £100m deficit in Uniq's pension fund.

Chairman Nigel Stapleton said the company had endured an "extremely challenging" year which the uncertainty of the bid period had exacerbated.

The bottom-line losses of £70.6m included a £28m write-down of assets, such as Uniq's fish and salad business in the UK and its salads operation in the Nordic region.

Stripping out the one-off costs meant the company made profits of £22.5m during the year, down from £24.7m at the same stage last year.

Mr Stapleton said trading in the UK had stabilised after Uniq lost key contracts as competition intensified among customers in the food retail sector.

Operating losses of £5.8m in the UK marked a sharp reversal of the £12.8m profits of a year earlier.

Outside the UK, Uniq said its businesses were performing more encouragingly, with operating profits in northern Europe up 60 per cent and rising by 18 per cent in southern Europe.

Mr Stapleton said the company was looking to the future with guarded optimism and trading in April had been slightly ahead of expectations.

"We have retained the confidence of our key customers and in the UK we have won some important new customers," he said.

But he said the financial performance of the group was unlikely to improve until after September.