STRATHMORE Foods, the Scottish ready-meal manufacturer, has increased turnover to £14.3 million from £13.5m amid renewed growth in the chilled and frozen foods markets after several years of decline, new accounts show.
The Forfar-based family-run business also posted a £1.7m profit in the accounts newly filed with Companies House, which it said is “a good result and reflects the strength of the business and the excellent effort of the whole staff”.
The company said it has also seen a slight increase in demand for ready-meals since the start of the coronavirus crisis as it filed accounts for the year ended June 30, 2019.
READ MORE: Coronavirus: Primark closes stores
Dain Egan, finance director, said the crisis “is certainly taking up a lot of management time”.
He said: “We have been liaising with suppliers and customers and giving the employees some assurance.
“The uncertainty is fairly pervasive and we are just trying to plan as far as we can really.
“I wouldn’t say we’ve seen a huge uplift but certainly we have seen a bit.”
READ MORE: Glasgow bar firm slams Government as virus leads to 200 jobs cut
The company said: “The growth in turnover resulted from increased penetration of chilled markets, and after several years of decline, of frozen markets.
“Whilst the sales development was very encouraging it was tempered by the fact that it was only in the latter part of the period that the business was able to pass on by way of price increases some of the increases in the direct costs that have been incurred in the previous years.”
During the year the company invested over £855,000 on fixed assets “continuing its policy of capital investment to improve production capacities and efficiencies” £318,000 was also contracted.
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 here