Meat industry supplier JR Dalziel has seen an upturn in demand from its retail butcher customers since the horsemeat scandal began.

The Bellshill company also confirmed it has managed to pick up enough work following Vion's closure of Halls in Broxburn, West Lothian, to mitigate for the impact of its largest Scottish customer closing down.

Managing director Ian Darroch said: "The horsemeat situation in truth has made a lot of consumers go back to retail butchers so we have seen a significant increase in that part of our business.

"The biggest part of the horsemeat debacle was in products manufactured outside the UK so we really did not supply into that at all.

"The business [Vion] we were doing has spun off into various parts of the industry and we have managed to follow it so far.

"There has been a little negative impact, but it is not substantial."

Mr Darroch was speaking as JR Dalziel's annual accounts were filed at Companies House showing an 8% rise in pre-tax profits from £8.3 million to more than £9m. That came alongside a near-10% boost in turn- over from £119m to £130.9m in the 12 months to September 28, 2012.

The business, founded in 1926, supplies several types of meat, ingredients such as batter and seasonings and a range of machinery to its clients.

Mr Darroch praised the efforts of the staff at the business describing them as an "exceptional team of people".

He said there had been organic growth across the different areas JR Dalziel operates in and he expects the business to remain profitable during 2013 although the market remains very "competitive".

Distribution costs were stable at £13.6m, although administrative expenses grew from £6m to £7.3m. The increase was partly due to JR Dalziel investing around £500,000 in upgrading its IT systems across the year to better integrate its depots around the UK.

A similar sum was spent in overhauling warehouse and distribution sites which are located from the north of Scotland to the south of England.

Further spending to introduce bar code scanning for the dispatch of goods is planned this year in a move which is expected to improve efficiency.

A small net debt position of around £41,000 was transformed to net funds of £6.5m at the year-end.

JR Dalziel has acquired more than 40 other businesses in the past 25 years and Mr Darroch confirmed two deals are expected to be complete before the end of this month.

He said: "We won't be taking any cavalier risks in acquisitions but we will be looking for com-panies that suit our business and interface well with what we have already."

Average staff numbers in the financial year were steady at 444, although employee costs increased from £12.8m to £13.3m.

Directors' emoluments increased from £535,860 to £551,642 with the highest paid receiving an increase from £225,402 to £234,523.