Further expansion at food storage and distribution company

Temperature controlled food storage and distribution business, Reed Boardall, is continuing to invest in expansion at its North Yorkshire facility.

In line with its pre-COVID plans, the company has undertaken work on an extension to one of the cold stores at its 55-acre site in Boroughbridge.

This will once again make it the largest and most modern cold store site in the UK, increasing capacity to 168,000 pallets.

Reed Boardall’s latest financial results (year ending 31 March 2020) show underlying turnover grew by 8.9%, rising to £68.4m from £62.8m the previous year.

The rise was driven by higher volumes through the firm’s cold store and transport operation, together with rising use of its ancillary blast freezing, picking and packing services.

Despite continued pressure on margins with increasing costs and strong competition in the transport sector, Reed Boardall implemented operational efficiencies bringing an increase in profits with underlying EBITDA at £4.44m (2019: £3.38m).

With the continued growth of its customer base across the UK, Reed Boardall has grown to become one of the largest temperature controlled food distribution businesses in the UK.

It employs nearly 800 staff and now has a fleet of 196 vehicles to deliver 12,000 pallets of frozen food daily for its clients.

The business operates four cold stores at its single Boroughbridge site, and has carried out work on a 110,000 sq ft extension to its newest cold store facility. The build programme to extend Cold Store Four is expected to be completed in March 2021.

Marcus Boardall, chief executive of Reed Boardall, said: “We’ve operated in this specialist field for over 25 years and work with food processors and retailers throughout the country who rely on us to supply their product on time and in premium condition.

“Changes in consumer shopping habits have led to food companies needing a more responsive logistics partner that is able to reliably consolidate products in order to cost-effectively deliver little and often.

“Our single site business model has proved ideal for this, resulting in a growth in demand for our services and, therefore, the need to extend our facilities.

“2019 was a particularly busy year for us as we continued to support the growth of our customers, and we again put in a solid financial performance, seeing turnover grow.

“Having already decided the time was right to invest in expanding our cold storage facility at Boroughbridge, we were committed to moving forward with the project, undeterred by the turmoil of the pandemic which put intense pressure on the logistics sector.

“2020 was a stark reminder of how important it is to have a robust and responsive supply chain.”

Finance director Sarah Roberts added: “Our latest financial results once again show a picture of strength and stability as we continue to build on our long history of partnering with some of the leading names in the UK food industry.

“While the company has remained resilient, we have battled tough trading conditions with fierce competition making it difficult to recover costs, particularly in the transport division.

“However, our ongoing focus on operating as efficiently as possible has delivered impressive results and put us on a sound footing for further expansion, despite the uncertainty of the pandemic together with the unknown impact of Brexit.

“Given the current situation, with unprecedented demand from consumers for frozen food, we are prepared for 2021 to be another extremely busy year and would like to thank our hard working and committed team for pulling out all the stops to help our customers keep supermarket freezers full.”