To the 57 varieties of Heinz products you can now add a 58th: ready-made baked beans on toast that pop out of a toaster.

Heinz is stepping up the battle of the beans with plans to launch a ready-made, toastable version of the ultimate convenience food as it tries to convince people to buy more of its canned beans.

Premier Foods took a bite out of Heinz's dominance of the baked-bean market last year with the launch of Branston Beans.

Premier claims already to have taken an 11.2 per cent market share, while Heinz's share of the baked-bean market is 68 per cent unchanged over the past five months, the company says.

Nevertheless, Bill Johnson, Heinz's chief executive, said the company needed to give people "new ways to use beans".

Heinz had developed a prepared version of beans on toast similar to the jam-filled Pop Tarts made by Kellogg, the cereal company.

"If people take the time to cook beans and put it on toast, why shouldn't we cut the process for them and give them beans on toast?" Mr Johnson told the FT at Heinz's US headquarters in Pennsylvania.

"You would know it as a Pop Tart almost, where we put beans on toast together, put it in a toaster, pop it up and the consumer's got it right there," he said.

The product would be launched "over the next 12 to 15 months".

Heinz's UK baked-bean business is about the same size as the company's tomato-ketchup business in the US, where it has a dominant 60 per cent.

But even there it is facing slow sales growth and plans to launch larger bottles to encourage people to use more of it.

Mr Johnson, a US citizen, is no stranger to British food and regularly visits the UK.

Two years ago he spent the summer travelling round the country.

"Having spent a lot of my life in Britain I'm convinced it's a good product," he said.

Heinz was also looking at launching "multi-packs" of beans containing small, microwaveable servings for individuals - cashing in on a rapidly growing trend for "food on the go".