Sweet progress for The Real Good Food Company
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The Real Good Food Company – which owns the largest independent non-refining distributor of sugar in Europe (Napier Brown) and is a supplier of dairy ingredients (Garrett), bakery ingredients (Renshaw) and a manufacturer of sweet bakery products (Haydens) for a range of major retail customers – saw sales fall along with the EU intervention price for sugar in 2010 although profits held up.
Reporting on the company's performance today (29 March), chairman Pieter Totté (pictured) said: "All four businesses have made substantial progress during the year; Napier Brown has come through the difficult years of the EU sugar regime changes and is now well positioned with its supply arrangements to play an important role in the UK market; Garrett's has been relaunched as a standalone business and has quickly and successfully embarked on a growth strategy; Renshaw has delivered remarkably strong growth ahead of expectations both in the UK and Export while Haydens has continued to grow its sales while also progressing its restructuring plan."
Total group sales for the year were down 7% to £200.1m (2009: £215.6m) while pre-tax profits increased to £2.34m (2009: £2.15m).
In the sugar business, Totté said that two years ago the overwhelming majority of the company's purchases came from the UK but it now envisages over 50% of its supply being imported by 2012.
At its Normanton site, new investments had included a new 25kg sugar bagging line and a shrinkwrap format for retail and wholesale. Future plans included upgrading our sugar processing equipment and developing new pack formats.
Garrett Ingredients – which is based at Thornbury, near Bristol and supplies a range of dairy powders, blends, and specialist ingredients, in addition to sugars to the ice cream and bakery industries – made a significant recovery in 2010.
.At Renshaw – which supplies a range of high quality food ingredients primarily to the bakery sector, and operates two facilities, one in Liverpool and the other in Carluke, south-east of Glasgow – new products and packaging received investment in machinery for both production and packing.
Haydens Bakeries produces chilled and ambient premium patisserie and dessert products to retail grocery customers from a site in Devizes, Wiltshire where restructuring had now been largely completed. Work on integrating modern systems alongside 'hand crafting' skills continued to make progress. System and procedural changes to stock and material management were providing benefits and greater control. Lean initiatives first introduced last year are being embraced across the operation.
