The owner of McVitie’s saw a £127m jump in sales last year as price increases and branded market share gains boosted trading.
Pladis UK posted a headline revenue leap of 14.9% to a record £984.4m in 2023 following two years of broadly flat sales.
The group’s newly filed accounts said this increase was largely attributable to increased product prices as it mitigated “unprecedented” inflation in input costs.
But it also highlighted that it grew sales volumes during the year and its brands increased their share of the overall UK biscuit category (excluding discounters) to 22.2% from 21.5%.
A Pladis spokesperson said this growth had been supported by brand investment, including the launch of products such as McVitie’s White Chocolate Digestives and campaigns like McVitie’s ‘True Originals’.
“Inflationary pressures impacted our supply inputs through 2023, but we continued accelerating our pace of innovation and worked to minimise the inflationary impacts on our customers,” the spokesperson said.
Progress was also seen on the bottom line, with adjusted EBITDA rising 11.8% to £151.6m from £135.6m as it benefited from previous work on supply chain costs.
Headline operating profits rose to £99.8m from £68.4m, largely due to restructuring and non-underlying charges more than halving to £12.7m from £26m.
Pladis said growth had continued so far in 2024, with “solid” volume and revenue gains “driven by innovation and our brand-building plans”.
However, it warned pressures from inflationary cost inputs remained intense, despite the wider drop in macro-level inflation. “We believe our strategy is well placed to continue our growth journey,” the spokesperson said.
“However, inflation continues to be a challenge driven by cocoa and wheat, which will create upward pricing pressure despite our best efforts to mitigate.”
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