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05
Dec 2024
Reed Boardall announces strong financial results
Boroughbridge cold storage and transport firm Reed Boardall has reported an increase in pre-tax profit from £1.52 million to £2.80 million in the financial year ending March 2024.
Turnover grew by 5.2% from £63.7 million to £67.1 million and net profit now accounts for 1.9% of revenue compared to 1.1% in the previous year.
The company said in a statement today it was “now seeing utilisation volumes, turnover and profit, increase across all areas of the business” following the multi-million-pound expansion and modernisation of its cold storage facilities in 2021.
Reed Boardall, which supplies major retailers and food manufacturers, operates from a 55-acre, 168,000 pallet-capacity site in Boroughbridge. It is one of the Harrogate district’s largest employers, with 418 staff — up from 377 last year.
The company is run by four directors, but the ultimate controlling partners are chief executive Marcus Boardall and Rowena Barlow.
Mr Boardall said:
After a tough few years which saw the industry reeling from the impact of covid and then spiralling costs, we are now seeing the business entering calmer waters. It’s gratifying to start to realise the benefits of our significant investment in increasing capacity and strengthening our single site model.
While it continues to be a dynamic market with some of the major players moving between logistics providers, we are finding that the strength of our reputation for delivering product on time, every time, is attracting new customers as well as helping us to retain or expand our existing contracts.
New customers
Reed Boardall has grown to become one of the largest temperature-controlled food distribution businesses in the UK.
Its fleet of 200 vehicles delivers 12,000 pallets of frozen food daily from manufacturers in Britain, and abroad to all the UK’s best-known supermarkets. It also provides blast freezing, picking and packaging services.
The annual report warned its most important financial risk is “the credit risk associated with the company's trade debtors”. It added: “The directors continue to maintain rigorous credit control procedures to ensure that this risk is managed properly.”
The company lost a major customer in April this year, the report said, but added:
New customers have already joined us, along with additional new volumes from our existing customers. We have also secured contracts with prestigious well known new customers which will start imminently once capacity allows. We are forecasting to be operating at full utilisation by the end of the financial year.
Staff costs rose from £12.8 million to £14.7 million. The highest paid director received remuneration of £149,044 — up from £140,992 the previous year.
Group finance director Sarah Roberts said:
These latest encouraging financial results are a further demonstration of the success of our single site strategy which enables us to serve customers efficiently.
During 2024, we have been less affected by labour shortages, largely due to the success of our in-house driver training academy which has resulted in 80 new HGV drivers qualifying since our scheme began.
We are approaching the year ahead from a position of strength, confident that our can-do attitude and solid reputation will continue to reassure some of the best-loved names in the British food sector that they are in the capable hands of a long-established, reliable partner.
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