Yorkshire firms among UK’s fastest growing private companies
Businesses in Yorkshire have secured places on a special Covid-19 edition of a league table of Britain’s most rapidly growing private firms.
Published this weekend, the 24th annual Sunday Times Virgin Atlantic Fast Track 100 league table ranks Britain’s private companies with the fastest-growing sales.
Six companies headquartered in Yorkshire (compared to eight last year) have won places on the table, including three new entrants.
Their sales have grown by an average of 79% a year over three years to a total of £437m, all are profitable, and together they employ over 5,800 people. The figures largely relate to financial periods before Covid-19 struck.
The region’s top-ranked company is Bluefin Trading, based in Hebden Bridge, which has grown sales 102% a year to £10.7m in 2019.
It was founded in 2013 by managing director Will Vaughan, 29, and Charlotte Smith, 28, and sells exercise equipment and portable fridges online.
It says orders for its stand-up paddleboards from March to July this year were up by more than 200% on last year.
Another new entrant is York-based VetPartners (No 20), launched in 2015 by chief executive Jo Malone, 45, who is a qualified vet, and led a £720m buyout backed by private equity firm BC Partners in 2018.
The company runs more than 500 practices, and is the largest employer on the league table with 4,422 staff. Its sales have grown 87% a year to reach £349m in the year to June.
The Fast Track 100 is sponsored by Virgin Atlantic, BDO, DHL Express and N+1 Singer, and is compiled by Fast Track, the Oxford-based research and networking events firm.
Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Group, which has supported Fast Track 100 for all 24 years, said: “While we are living in extremely uncertain and challenging times, there is one thing I am certain of: entrepreneurs are the dreamers, the doers, and the innovators that have the power to have a positive impact on society.
“There are so many inspiring examples of this on the Fast Track 100 league table showing this is just as true, if not more so, in 2020 as it ever has been.”
