Finsbury Food Group has reported a 78 per cent rise in sales for the first four months of its financial year helped by its recent acquisitions.

It said the deals for bakery firm Fletchers as well as cake maker Johnstone’s Just Desserts will help it grow strongly this year.

The AIM-listed business, headed by chief executive John Duffy, paid £56m to acquire Fletchers, a supplier of bread and pastries to the major supermarkets with bases in Sheffield, Manchester and London, in October last year.

Fletchers is now said to be “fully integrated and performing strongly”.

In June this year Finsbury agreed to buy Johnstone’s, which makes cakes for coffee shop chains, from administrators in a deal which preserved around 150 jobs in East Kilbride.

The integration process there is also said to be going well.

Prior to that deal Finsbury was already a major employer in Scotland with around 1,100 staff. The majority are employed at the Lightbody Cakes business in Hamilton which makes celebration cakes for supermarkets and high street customers.

Finsbury said sales in the first few months of its financial year grew to £102 million.

Organic growth was said to be more than 10 per cent with the UK bakery division up by 8.7 per cent.

The European business, a joint venture with Scottish entrepreneur and former Finsbury chairman Martin Lightbody, increased sales by 19.4 per cent.

Finsbury said: “Whilst consumer confidence has improved, the economic and trading outlook remains uncertain and we anticipate that the Fletchers and Johnstone's acquisitions will drive the majority of the group's growth in this financial year.

“The board believes our larger, more diversified speciality bakery group is a strong multi-channel business, well equipped to deliver growth and improved shareholder value over the coming years.”

Peter Smedley, an analyst at Panmure, said the update “demonstrates a continuation of the established recent pattern of strong underlying momentum combined with further positive commentary about the successful integration of the two recently acquired businesses”.