QUORN maker Marlow Foods is being offered for sale, it emerged yesterday.

Marlow, in Stokesley, North Yorkshire, could be worth up to £250m if sold by owners Montagu Private Equity.

Quorn products include a range of chilled and frozen vegetarian foods, including ready meals, sausages, nuggets, grills, burgers and mince, making it the leading European brand in the market for alternatives to meat.

Investment bank Roths-child has been appointed to find potential buyers for the company, which employs about 350 people at two sites in Teesside and North Yorkshire.

The bank may then run an auction to sell the business.

A Montagu spokesman said: "Marlow Foods is a very good business, and a growing business."

Marlow Foods was bought by Montagu from drug company AstraZeneca in 2003 for £70m.

The last buyout is not believed to have affected the number of employees at Marlow's two sites in Stokesley and Billingham.

Since its national launch in the UK in 1994, Quorn has developed into the UK's number one alternative brand to meat and has established successful international operations in the US and several European countries. Montagu was previously called HSBC Private Equity and the bank retains a 19.9 per cent stake in the company.

Its director, Simon Pooler, joined the board of Marlow as a non-executive director in 2003.

Ross Warburton, who spent nine years as executive chairman of Warburtons Limited, also joined Marlow as chairman.

Marlow was founded in 1985 to manufacture Quorn, which occurs naturally in soil.

The raw material, a mycoprotein, is grown by a fermentation process at Marlow's site in Billingham before being sent to Stokesley for processing.

Although Marlow Foods does some of its own packing, it contracts out to other North-East companies.

International Cuisine, in Consett, County Durham, is one of its contractors.

Marlow Foods began exporting to Europe in 1992 and launched in the US in 2002.

It now exports to Ireland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, the US and Sweden.

The business agreed a deal with fast-food chain McDonald's last year to supply its meat-free products on a trial basis.