The group’s overall revenue was down 4.1% to £411.6m, compared to £429m in 2014 while its EBITDA was up 6% to £21.6m and profit before taxation was up 5.5%.
Its agricultural division’s profit before tax was up 8.8% to £10.4m thanks to its US feed block business performing strongly over the period.
CEO Tim Davies said: “Our international feed block business has performed well, with a key strength of the business being our geographic reach. In the US, we have seen a significant uplift in demand on the back of the rebuilding of beef herds together with favourable weather conditions.”
Plans to grow
The business’ retail division grew sales by 8.6% over the year while like-for-like sales increased by 5.3%. In the UK, it has 30 Country Store sites and plans to grow this further as it identifies areas it is not fully represented in.
Speaking to GlobalMeatNews, Davies said the company would be looking at further investment in the future and examining new geographical regions to expand into.
“We’ve invested quite a lot in infrastructure and this year we’ll be finishing work on our feed block plant in Silver Springs, Nevada. Generally our policy is to reinvest in the business and we will be investing £8m over the next 12 months across all three of our divisions.”
It recently expanded into Brazil, which it hopes will help growth in South America.
“Long-term, though, we’ll be looking at using Brazil as a hub for the rest of South America and any country that has a large ruminant livestock market.”
'Distribution partners'
“Brazil is a good market to be in and we’re currently looking at finding distribution partners so there is still a lot of work to be done. We’re taking the learnings from our work in New Zealand and applying them to Brazil.”
The company is also focusing on new innovations. “Aminomax is a protective bypass protein and is very important for the dairy industry. We have a plant in the US and one in the UK, and we’re currently researching new products to launch alongside Aminomax.”