Profits hike cheers Robinsons
FAMILY-owned brewer and pub company Frederic Robinson boosted sales and profits and expanded its estate last year, it emerged today.
The Stockport firm, owned and run by members of the Robinson family, said it had overcome “a difficult climate” to boost its financial performance.
Robinsons said the increase in profits from £1.4m to £3.2m during 2008 had been achieved by cost cutting and growing sales. Employee numbers fell during the year from 436 to 397.
As a company with a strong financial position – Robinsons grew shareholders’ funds by £5m to £72.3m – the company was able to buy 10 “excellent new houses” for £10.5m during the year.
Sites included the Bells at Peover near Knutsford Cheshire, the Ribchester Arms in Preston and the Screes Inn, Nether Wasdale in Cumbria.
Other sites were purchased in Northwich, North Wales and Warrington.
During the year Robinsons, which has around 400 pubs in Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Cumbria, Merseyside, Lancashire and Derbyshire, said it had sold 13 poorly- performing pubs for £1.4m.
Chairman Peter Robinson said in his review of 2009 that trading conditions were tough, the regulatory burden was ever-increasing and that 2010 is going to be “another difficult year”, having got off to a bad start because of the harshest winter in a decade.
He said: “Both the Government and the EU continue to produce a never-ending raft of new and mostly unnecessary regulations meaning that far too much time is spent on form filling and complying with these regulations.
“Regarding the future a good summer would help but 2010 is going to be another difficult year having got off to a poor start with the coldest winter for a decade.”
The company said it had reduced the pace of its pubs improvement programme to cut costs, but had started to plan a major investment to modernise its historic Unicorn brewery in Stockport.
German company Steinecker has been appointed to carry out the work to create a “modern, automated state of the art plant” which will take 18 months to complete.
Employee numbers fell during the year from 436 to 397.
