Crawshaw “delighted” with acquisition as expansion plans beef up
FRESH meat retailer the Crawshaw Group is gearing up for growth, after an “extremely encouraging” start from its acquisition of Gabbotts Farm earlier this year.
Chairman Richard Rose said the firm was “delighted” with its purchase of North West firm Gabbotts Farm, which included 11 butchers and a factory shop with a small distribution centre.
Revenues for the half year to 31 July 2015 increased to £16.7m, from £11.8m in the same period last year.
Though the firm made a pretax loss of £126,426, due to store openings costing Crawshaw £700,000, and costs associated with the acquisition of Gabbotts. This was compared to a pretax profit of £673,657 in the same six months in 2014.
Chairman Mr Rose is confident that this period of growth will be sustained. He said: “Of particular note is the performance of our two most recent stores, Bolton and Worksop, which most closely represent our rollout concept.
“Both stores opened well and are trading ahead of our expectations with early indications they will outperform our ‘base case’ profitability assumptions.
“Our growth plans are progressing well with significant progress being made by the new management team on building the required infrastructure to support them. As previously noted, this has necessitated a number of costs to be incurred ahead of delivering the new store openings. These accelerated opening costs amounted to £0.7m in H1 (2014: £0.0m).”
Crawshaw has distribution center in Rotherham, plus 22 retail locations across Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.
