THE parent company of Co Down artisan food manufacturer Finnebrogue increased its profits on a reduced turnover in the trading year in which its charismatic founder Denis Lynn died in a biking accident.
Meat processor Lynn’s Country Foods, a major supplier to many of the UK’s top supermarkets, saw its sales fall back slightly from £120.1 million to £119.3 million in the year to February 2022, according to accounts filed at Companies House.
But its gross and operating profit were both up, and on a bottom-line basis, the company's retained profit rose from £4.3m to £6.9m.
And its net debt at the end of the financial year also fell significantly from £23.3m to £13.6m, the accounts show.
In May 2021 the company's founder and chairman Denis Lynn died tragically, leaving his wife Christine as majority shareholder.
Denis had been named the UK’s most innovative company director by the IoD in 2019 and entrepreneur of the year by The Grocer in 2020, and he led Finnebrogue right up until his untimely death.
In November Finnebrogue Artisan named UK grocery veteran Roger Burnley CBE, the former Asda chief executive, as its new non-executive chairman in a move it said marked the beginning of a new chapter for the company.
After a decade as an executive director at Sainsbury's, Burnley joined Asda as chief operating officer and deputy chief executive in 2016, before becoming chief executive a year later.
Lynn's Country Foods' principal brand Finnebrogue is the UK’s leading top tier sausage manufacturer, and it also produces venison, wagyu, bacon and ham products.
Its revolutionary Naked Bacon, the first mass produced rasher to be made without nitrites, the cancer-causing chemicals traditionally used to cure the meat, has transformed the UK bacon market, making a tasty and safer alternative available on a mass scale for the first time.
In a strategic report accompanying the results, the directors say they expect the current level of activity at the company "to be sustained for the foreseeable future".
According to the accounts, the average number of employees at the company grew by nearly 100 - up from 619 to 717.
But interestingly, the wages bill rose only marginally from £16.9m to £17.1m.
The overall directors' remuneration almost doubled from £317,014 in 2021 to £620,336 last year, and the salary of the highest-paid director almost quadrupled from £128,711 to £477,323.
Finnebrogue currently operates from four state-of-the-art sites, having invested more than £60 million in capital expenditure since 2015.
Its current board is comprised of Roger Burnley (chairman), Christine Lynn (majority shareholder), Kerry Lynn, Clare Moore and Tara Lynn (all non-executive directors), Colin Walsh (deputy chair), Andrew Nethercott (managing director), Jago Pearson (chief strategy officer), Andrew Ware (finance director), Declan Ferguson (research, development & technical director) and Dermot Hawkins (operations director).
