A strong supply market brought a dip in turnover for QV Foods, but pre-tax profit stayed at 3.7 per cent of its annual revenue for the second straight year.
The vegetable supplier’s turnover for the year to 31 May 2015 was £139.5 million. This was a fall from the £163.5m turnover figure the previous financial year, which was enough to secure QV Foods 16th spot in the recent FPJ Big 50 Companies 2016.
Pre-tax profit, though, was £5.2m – not too troubling a fall from the £6m figure posted the previous year.
The financial year coincided with the sale of the business’ potato arm to Asda’s purchasing business, IPL.
In the report accompanying the accounts, QV Foods director Duncan Worth said: “The 2014 UK season was one of good supply and quality across produce depressing free market prices at the beginning of the season. This resulted in retailer pressure on their supply prices, sharpened by intense retail competition and the continuing decline in volume consumption of fresh potatoes.
“Nevertheless, the supply environment created opportunities in our packing, processing and fresh prepared businesses that enabled us to mitigate the retail pressure to the extent that we were able to deliver an above-budget profit performance.
'While difficult market conditions prevailed, QV’s customers continued to outperform the market in its core businesses buoyed by strong cross-category merchandising support, quality and service. This delivered growth in our fresh prepared and packed veg operations and enabled us to capitalise on operational efficiencies arising from recent investment.”
Looking forward, Worth said he expects the challenging environment to remain the status quo. In November, QV Foods extended its Veg Lovers brand (pictured) into prepared produce, in a bid to tempt new consumers into trying fresh prepared lines by focusing on “core, successful products” rather than “baffling them with an array of choices.”
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