The biggest part of the business, which includes Golden Wonder-branded crisps, Wheat Crunchies, Nik Naks and the company's own-label brands, will be sold to The Snack Factory in a deal worth at least £300m.
Under a separate deal Wotsits will be sold to Walkers for an undisclosed sum. Both deals are subject to approval by the Office of Fair Trading.
The Golden Wonder portfolio will be a bonus to own-label crisps and snacks manufacturer The Snack Factory, which in 1995 tried unsuccessfully to buy Golden Wonder in a joint bid with PepsiCo.The company was sold instead to a management buyout team backed by Legal & General Ventures.
The Snack Factory already owns a number of impulse brands including Bensons, O'Malley's, XL Crisps, Directors Cut, Cool Crew and Space Wars, which it bought from Snackhouse which went into receivership last October.
If they go ahead, the deals will have implications for Golden Wonder's agency roster. Bartle Bogle Hegarty is its lead agency, though Golden Wonder also recently added Quiet Storm to its roster to create TV ads for the crisps brand.
BBH is currently working on a number of briefs for the Wotsits brands, and has been told to expect "business as usual". But if the deal goes through, the Wotsits account may switch to Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, Walkers' lead creative agency.
Golden Wonder cut its TV spend drastically last year following a strategic marketing review.
It decided that it was more effective to spend money closer to point-of-sale rather than try and compete with the TV budgets of rivals such as Walkers.
It also stepped up its new product development and aimed to focus on adult ranges as much as children's products.
In the past three years the company launched Wotsit Wafflers, Weenie Wotsits and the Quite Hot Crisps range. This year Golden Wonder launched Goalden Balls, the 'Quite Strong' premium crisps range, and snack and dip combo Duets.
Last year the company achieved record sales of £200m. It sells more than 35 million packets of snacks and crisps every week.
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