The business, which is based at Harewood, is holding its annual meeting today in Leeds.

Chairman, Jeremy Hamer, will tell shareholders that the Christmas period will be key for the company in the short term.

He will tell the meeting: "Despite the difficult trading environment which is slowing the progress of all our business units to differing degrees, we have had a reasonable start to the year with sales for the first 18 weeks of the current financial year 15 per cent ahead of last year at £24.3m and five per cent ahead on an adjusted like for like basis.


"The Christmas/New Year trading period remains important for all our businesses, particularly Dormen Nuts, Snacks Unlimited and Glisten Confectionery at Christmas and Halo Foods in the post Christmas period when consumers look for healthier products."

The company says that as a result of current market conditions it has amended its second half trading programme to place increased emphasis on winning new business by delivering better consumer value.

Glisten is launching selected new natural snacking products which will retail at around 99p.

The company says these price-fighting products, under its own brand names, have already ready been listed by some retailers and will launch early in 2009.

The 'value programme' will run alongside Glisten's core activity "and will underpin our performance during the year ahead".

At the end of October, Glisten paid £3.25m in deferred consideration to the vendors of Dormen Foods from the group's resources.

Following this payment the company's borrowing headroom was £3m and since borrowings have begun to fall as the group continues to generate cash.

Today's statement adds: "Our loan facilities, which are not renewable until 2012, contain a cap and collar mechanism which will restrict the full benefits of recent interest rate reductions. As such we anticipate our average cost of borrowing will be around six per cent for the year.

"We are confident that Glisten is in the right place to weather the storm but market conditions across the consumer sector are self evidently difficult and demand levels are more volatile than usual.

"We will therefore continue with our plan and review our position in the New Year when we have a clearer outlook".