About 75% of the cost increase is passed on to consumers

Pasta Foods, in Great Yarmouth, imports durum wheat from Canada, Italy and France, which it mills into semolina flour to make pasta shapes and meals.

The company said in April 2007 the price for a tonne of grain cost �140, but that the price has now risen to more than �420.

Managing director Peter Barry said none of the firms 130 jobs were at risk.

'Customer pays'

The company was founded in the 1960s and took over the Waveney Mill on the bank of the River Yare in Great Yarmouth and built a factory nearby to make pasta products.

The company now supplies numerous food manufacturers with semolina for snack foods as well as making ready meals and dried pasta shapes which is sells at home and abroad.

Mr Barry put the increases down to a combination of factors including poor harvests in Europe and Australia, land being given over for growing bio-fuel crops and falling subsidies from the EU.

Mr Barry said: "A year ago Canadian or French durum wheat was about �140 a tonne, and the current market for Canadian durum wheat for a March delivery is about �420 to �445 a tonne.

"That's getting on for nearly a triple material cost and that means we have to try to recover that from the market place.