Sales top £112m at Quorn as it announces new £7m innovation centre
North Yorkshire headquartered Quorn Foods has reported like-for-like sales totalling £112m for the first six months of the year, up 12% on the same period in 2017, as the meat-free foods market continues to grow rapidly.
Reporting on its H1 figures for 2018, the business said growth in the market was typically between 10% and 20%, with the UK up 15%. For the same period year in 2017, like-for-like sales stood at £100m and pre-tax operating profits of £13.7m
The Stokesley-based meat free specialist said its growth built on Quorn Foods’ strongest ever year of growth in 2017, and enabled the company stay on track to become a billion dollar business by 2027.
Quorn Foods also announced a further £7m investment in a new Global Innovation Centre at its headquarters, which it said was “creating a high tech British powerhouse and maintaining Quorn’s innovation leadership in the meat-free industry.”
Quorn said: “The facility will break ground at the end of this summer, and enhance capability in both core protein fermentation, the heart of the Quorn Foods’ success, and innovation capability to develop new and better products. Quorn has already created over 100 jobs in the last year as it expands and expects to continue job creation, particularly in the STEM area as it brings the new facilities on line.”
The business said there was a clear global trend towards meat alternatives as consumers grow concerned about the health and environmental issues associated with excessive meat consumption.
Quorn Foods chief executive Kevin Brennan said: “With category momentum we are confident we can become a $1bn business in under 10 years.
“We are seeing lots of Silicon Valley investment and hype in this space but we have already built up 30 years of expertise in the meat-free category. With our renewed investment in R&D we expect to lead the way for decades to come. We hope to demonstrate that there are great British businesses in the North that can win on a global stage. We are already seeing amazing growth internationally: Australian sales are up 50% and US sales are up 23%. In the US supermarket giant Kroger, we now have the fastest selling product in the category. With continued investment we believe we can continue this level of performance.”
In addition to its North Yorkshire HQ and Teesside base, the company has sites in Norfolk, Frankfurt in germany and Chicago in the US.
Quorn was sold in September 2015 for £550m to Monde Nissin Corporation, a Filipino firm. Brennan said at the time that it was their ambition to turn Quorn into a $1bn company.
