CARR'S Milling Industries has seen an improvement in its business, thanks to competitors closing and a greater dependence on overseas wheat.
The company said the flour milling industry has been plagued with over capacity and volatile pricing in recent years.
However, a poor UK wheat harvest in 2012 has meant a greater need for imported grains which has helped Carr's, given the dockside location of its mills at Kirkcaldy, Fife, and Silloth, Cumbria.
It said another low volume harvest across 2013 is expected, meaning further reliance on overseas wheat.
The Scottish operation had also benefited from the closure of a Hovis mill on Dunaskin Street in Glasgow earlier this year, which helped to ease capacity pressure.
A new £17 million flour mill, the first to be built in Scotland in more than three decades, remains on track to open in Kirkcaldy during September.
Carr's said: "The planned significant efficiencies and improvements in operating margins [will come through next year]."
Analysts at Investec kept their predictions for this year unchanged, but added: "We still anticipate profit progress next year as the new mill drives flour milling returns back to more acceptable levels."
The weather also provided a boost to the agriculture division, which includes Ayr-based animal nutrition business Scotmin, at Carr's with cold and wet conditions in the spring saw a high level of sales of animal health products and feed blocks, particularly in the US, UK, mainland Europe and New Zealand.
A further £1.6m is being invested in a manufacturing plant in Watertown, New York State, for dairy cattle protein AminoMax because of high demand.
The UK plant manufacturing AminoMax opened at Lancaster in June and Carr's said the initial reception has been encouraging.
Its retail network in the UK has seen a fall in sales of farm machinery, but it plans to keep investing in its shops having seen success from a recent revamp of a flagship site in Carlisle.
The engineering arm was said to have seen strong revenue growth in the 18 weeks to July 6 with more demand for remote handing equipment and robotics from the nuclear and petrochemical industries.
German based Wälischmiller is experiencing "buoyant" demand with several major contracts completed and its order book still remaining healthy.
A revamp of the factory and offices at Markdorf in southern Germany is on course to be completed by the end of November.
Steel fabrication business Bendalls secured a deal with Hyundai to supply pressure vessels for BP oil fields to the west of Shetland.
Investec added: "Engineering continues to make solid progress on existing contracts, and with an encouraging rate of enquiries it expects to keep the order book busy for the next few years."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article