Retailer and SPAR wholesaler A.F. Blakemore has posted robust trading figures after recovering from the effects of the pandemic.
The company revealed that its sales had grown 19% to £1.19bn over the 12 months to 1 May 2022. This follows a decline of 5% in the previous year when its foodservice and wholesale customers across the travel, tourism, leisure and educational sectors were heavily disrupted by the Covid crisis.
The improved performance continued into its current financial year, and after 24 weeks to October, sales had risen 9% against tough comparatives.
“This has been delivered by a robust performance across our core SPAR network and our ability to use opportunities across recovery sectors such as travel and foodservice,” said Chairman Peter Blakemore.
“We also saw a steady return to growth for the Philpotts chain of prepared-food stores, while enabling an impressive performance from home delivery and quick commerce, where we were pivotal in helping this new channel scale-up.”
Despite the market-wide supply chain disruption, A.F. Blakemore still delivered underlying EBITDA of £20m during its last financial year. However, it admitted that maintaining a high level of supply chain performance had required the business to make “significant investment” during this period which resulted in a pre-tax loss of £3.3m, down from a profit of £6m in the previous year.
“Opening our new Bedford depot provides future supply chain security to all our trade partners and has at once enabled greater stock holding at a time where many manufacturers were struggling with inbound availability, which we know is critical to our independent partners,” said Blakemore.
“Bedford is the cornerstone of our long-term supply chain strategy and was built and opened during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The development, combined with significant labour shortages across the UK, required us to incur an unplanned £17m in our total logistics operation.”
Meanwhile, Chief Executive Jerry Marwood commented: “Being an independent business means we can continue to invest even through the most challenging times. The decisions we made in 2021/22 have resulted in stable outbound supply, growth in new format propositions and the successful trial and rollout of our new commercial system.
“Process improvement and investment in technology has also delivered greater efficiency and a corresponding improvement in our base margin. However, given the macro-economic turmoil predicted in the next 18 months, we must continue to be vigilant and work hard to protect our customers interests.”
