Finsbury Food Group has hit the £100m revenue mark for the first time in a six-month period, bucking the flat sales trend in the overall cake market.
The cake, bread and gluten-free bakery manufacturer achieved total sales of £102m for the first half of the financial year to 31 December 2011, up 16% on the same period in 2010, with organic growth of just over £14m.
John Duffy, chief executive, told British Baker the group was now looking to break through the £200m mark in its next full-year results. He put the revenue increase down to a continuation of the work the group started around this time last year. "What drove growth last year was a combination of premium products, and a lot of investment in NPD behind our brands," said Duffy. "In the celebration cake market we had great success for example introducing a £20 Disney Cars 2 cake into the grocery market."
He said the group had also done a lot of work with its smaller licence brands, including its Vogels bread brand, "where we carried out a lot of NPD, and achieved a number of distribution deals on the back of it".
Duffy admitted the firm had been playing "a little bit of catch-up" on product development, and the challenge now would be to continue its recent growth level.
Growth in its cake business was up 10%, and in its bread and free-from arm up 8%.
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