The latest accounts for Fife-headquartered company Kettle Produce, which handles more than 12,000 acres of vegetable crops from across Scotland and elsewhere, show a pre-tax loss of £42,000 for the year to May 29, 2021. This compares with a pre-tax loss of £1.92 million the year before.
The accounts, filed with Companies House, show a slight decrease in turnover to £149.99m, from £152.17m the year before. The bulk of sales – £149.34m – were in the UK, while sales to Europe decreased by 47% to £658,000, from £1.24m previously.
Kettle Produce company secretary and finance director Liz Waugh said the trading landscape during the year was dominated by the impact of the pandemic: “Our sales profile was determined by consumer demand with more home cooking during period of lockdown but less demand for prepared veg and ready meals. Our sites providing the former experienced strong sales volumes but our prepared and business-to-business sites experienced a significant disruption.”
She said a partial closure of one of the company’s Scottish sites in September 2020 due to Covid-19 had a material impact on trading results due to a slow recovery to getting the site back to full production.
“In addition, the business had to invest significant amounts in structural and operational changes to enable it to have appropriate social distancing and hygiene standards in place,” added Ms Waugh.
Source: pressandjournal.co.uk