ICE-cream maker Mackie’s of Scotland is celebrating a record month for sales, having achieved a 28 per cent year-on-year rise in May.
The Aberdeenshire company revealed yesterday that, as the UK enjoyed its sunniest May since records began, its sales in May were about £400,000 higher than in the same month of 2017. This helped it to its best month for sales since it started producing ice cream in 1986. Comparing May with April, sales were up 35%.
As well as achieving record sales in its home market, Mackie’s also enjoyed buoyant exports to Taiwan in May.
An increase in demand from this east Asian island democracy of around 23 million people meant 18,900 tubs left the ice-cream producer’s Aberdeenshire farm for Taiwan each week in May.
Stuart Common, commercial director at Mackie’s of Scotland, said: “The success we are having in the Asian market right now is fantastic. Exporting ice cream can be a real challenge, especially as we have to ship the contents in specialised refrigerated containers. Right now we are exporting ice cream to both [South] Korea and Taiwan – who upped their orders significantly.”
He added: “The cost of cream is still at a very high level, which means making ice cream is actually quite expensive. Thankfully our own herd of cows does partly buffer us from the soaring costs.”
Mackie’s highlighted the large amount of staff overtime required to keep up with booming demand for ice cream in its home market last month. It flagged May 26, the Saturday of the bank holiday weekend, as its peak sales day.
Mr Common said: “It’s great to see the direct correlation with the weather and the amount of ice cream sold last month. In fact, it was our best sales month since we started producing ice cream in 1986. The huge increase meant we had to work all the hours just to keep up – thankfully a number of our hard-working team were able to put in a lot of overtime to meet the demand.”
Mackie’s also flagged buoyant sales of its ice cubes in May.
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