No Fear range boosts Aimia Foods
FAMILY-owned food and beverage manufacturer and distributor Aimia Foods said its new No Fear range of branded drinks had helped boost annual sales by 3% to a record £52.8m last year.
The Haydock-based company, which celebrated its 30th anniversary last year, boosted underlying earnings and cut debt during the year to the end of June, newly-filed accounts reveal.
Aimia, which employs around 250 people at its three adjacent units on Penny Lane which totals 225,000sq ft, makes a hot chocolate drinks for Maltesers and the Galaxy chocolate brand and also produces a similar product for WeightWatchers.
It supplies these and other products to retailers, wholesalers and vending machine operators.
Aimia, which for a time was part of Nichols Group – the listed company behind Vimto, is now 68% owned by Rob Unsworth, the son of Gary Unsworth, who co-founded the business in Burscough in 1981 with his brother Ian.
In the review of the trading period the directors said as well as hitting record revenues the business had grown gross margins from 16.8% to 17.4%.
Ebitda rose from £3.2m to £4.7m, but after exceptional and other charges of £7.2m bottom line profits were £767,000 compared with £979,000 in 2012,
The company said the sales growth and margin increase had been “supported by the group’s continued strategic move towards developing its branded beverage business and securing long-term manufacturing partnerships with multinational bluechip clients.”
The directors added: “The launch of the No Fear Extreme Energy Drink has proved to be a significant success, which justified the expansion of the group’s sales and marketing resource.
“Sales of this new branded launch exceeded £3m in its first year and new additional retail and convenience store listings have recently been secured and will continue this momentum.”
