BED giant Silentnight is buying a rival business for £3 million.

The Colne-based firm has announced it is purchasing the Rest Assured business from home improvement products group The Spring Ram Corporation.

Silentnight said it was holding talks with Spring Ram and expected the deal to acquire the beds operations to be completed by the end of this month.

Rest Assured, which employs more than 100 staff at an 88,000-sq-ft factory in Batley, Yorkshire, made a pre-tax loss of £581,000 on sales of £8.4 million in 1996.

Silentnight said it expected to increase sales volume and would develop the Rest Assured brand and product range.

Barry McKenzie, finance director at Silentnight, said: "The operation is losing money and if the deal goes through, it will secure jobs and once we turn around the business we will create jobs."

Finance director Martin Towers, of The Spring Ram Corporation, said: "We decided to sell the business as it became non-core to us and it was geographically convenient for Silentnight which has branches in the Yorkshire area."

Silentnight said trading in the second half of its financial year was in line with the management's expectations.

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