LEES Foods, the Scottish confectionery and ice-cream wafer maker, has served up bumper profits in a year which saw it make its biggest ever capital investment and benefit from good summer weather.
The owner of Lees of Scotland and The Waverley Bakery booked pre-tax profits before exceptional items of £1.72 million for the year ended December 31, up 23 per cent on the prior year.
Profits grew as the Cambuslang-based Waverley division, which supplies wafers and cones to the ice-cream trade, achieved record turnover of £6m for the year, boosted by sunny weather.
Turnover across the group edged up to £27.4m from £26.3m, accounts newly filed at Companies House have shown.
Chief executive Clive Miquel said: “We had a good summer last year – that actually contributed to Waverley increasing its turnover. But it was generally an all-round, good performance.”
Mr Miquel noted that since year-end it has commissioned a new production line at its factory in Coatbridge, where the Lees products are made, following a £1.7m investment.
The project, which brought in robots to automatically pack teacakes and snowballs, boosted the efficiency of the operation, with margins improving by nearly one-third. Mr Miquel admitted the commissioning process had brought some “teething problems” but expects the investment to bring long-term benefits to efficiency.
No redundancies were made as a result of the robots being introduced in March, with staff previously involved in packing deployed elsewhere in the factory. “It was a big, big challenge for us,” Mr Miquel said. “It was a big capital investment, probably our biggest ever at £1.7m. It took a bit longer than expected to get it up and running but hopefully we will reap the benefits in the near future.”
The accounts confirm Lees received more than £2m, after fees and tax, from Her Majesty’s Customs & Revenue, during the year, after it successfully claimed it had overpaid VAT on snowballs between 2008 and 2014. The proceeds helped Lees invest in the robot technology.
Lees launched its first advertising campaign in over a decade during the period, and pledged that there would be more to come. It also introduced a new range of confectionery bars which brought an “immediate uplift” in sales.
With this summer’s weather less clement than last year’s, Mr Miquel noted that sales in the current year have been flat. He stated the focus of Lees this year will be on “consolidating, focusing on efficiencies and improvement in margins”.
The average number of staff employed by Lees was at 344 last year, up from 327 in 2013.
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