NORTHERN Foods pledged a £50m boost for its pension fund yesterday as it said the market for its products remained very competitive.

The group, which employs 300 staff at its Dalepak frozen foods factory in Leeming Bar, North Yorkshire, will make the payments over the next 15 months in order to fill a deficit that stood at £220m at the end of March last year.

Hull-based Northern, which also makes Goodfella's pizzas and Fox's biscuits, said the final salary scheme, which has 8,000 active members and 5,500 pensioners, would now be closed to new entrants.

The update on the pension scheme came as Northern said it had been performing in line with expectations since a trading update in January. It still expects profits before exceptional items to be in the region of £80m in the year to March 31, compared with £86m reported last time.

In a brief statement, Northern said: "The market remains very competitive, but we are continuing to make good progress with our efficiency and restructuring programmes."

The group, which is feeling the pressure from a price war among its supermarket customers, said in January that overall sales in its chilled food division had been lower than expected in the run-up to Christmas, reflecting in particular the company's trading with M&S.

M&S accounts for about a third of Northern's business and is among its five largest customers, who also include Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons. It makes ready meals, pork pies, sausage rolls and other own-brand fresh food products for M&S.

Northern has also been undergoing a restructuring that has included the planned shutdown of two pastry plants at Evesham in Worcestershire and Carlisle, Cumbria, with the previously announced loss of 1,060 jobs.