Downpatrick-based meat and sausage processor Lynn’s Country Foods, parent company of artisan food manufacturer Finnebrogue, has reported a 9.6% growth in sales in the year to February last.
Accounts filed at Companies House show that the company, which was set up in the early 1990s by the late Denis Lynn, had record-breaking revenues of £159.3 million.
And its bottom-line profit soared more than fourfold from £1.1 million to £5.2 million, meaning its assets at the end of the financial year had increased to almost £81 million.
The average number of employees at the company also grew from 699 to 758, pushing up the wages bill from £9.5m to £20.9m, while the overall remuneration for the firm’s 10 listed directors almost doubled from £444,500 to £811,900.
- Coming soon - ‘warts-and-all’ life story of late entrepreneur Denis LynnOpens in new window
- Finnebrogue invests £2.8m to upgrade plant-based food factory in DownpatrickOpens in new window
- Well Wagyu know - Finnebrogue in world-first ‘laboratory-grown burger’ partnershipOpens in new window
- Meat processor Finnebrogue increases profits and slashes debtOpens in new window
- Analysis: Denis Lynn - from expelled schoolboy to millionaire entrepreneurOpens in new window
The company is under the ultimate control of director and majority shareholder Christine Lynn, widow of the company’s founder, who died in a tragic quad bike accident in May 2021.
But since the end of the reporting period, as part of a group reorganisation completed at the end of October, Lynn’s Country Foods declared a dividend in specie of £65.7 million to LCF Holdings Ltd, a company registered in the Isle of Man.
A dividend in specie (which derives from the Latin phrase meaning “in kind” or “in the same form”) is one that is paid out to shareholders in the form of assets, rather than cash, and is seen as a way for companies to manage their assets and avoid cash flow issues.
Assets that are commonly transferred in specie include property, shares, bonds, warrants, and machinery, and some in specie transactions may have tax benefits.
Lynn Country Food’s principal brand Finnebrogue - which was named employer of the year at the Grocer Gold Awards in 2024 - is the UK’s leading top tier sausage manufacturer and also produces venison, wagyu, bacon and ham products.
Finnebrogue made its name producing premium sausages for leading supermarkets like Marks & Spencer, before launching its revolutionary naked bacon, made without nitrites, in 2017.
It remains the only mass-produced bacon to be made without nitrites, the curing chemicals used in most other bacon and hams that have been linked to colorectal cancer by the World Health Organisation.
In 2020, Finnebrogue opened the doors to a state-of-the-art, purpose-built, plant-based facility, the most advanced of its kind in Europe. From here, it produced numerous own-label meat-free products to leading supermarkets, including Tesco, Aldi and M&S.
During the trading year Finnebrogue invested £2.8 million to upgrade its plant-based food factory in Downpatrick
It installed 2,850 solar panels on the roof of its three-year-old vegan food factory and also expanded car parking and infrastructure around the site to accommodate further growth.
Finnebrogue said the investment will eliminate hundreds of tonnes of Co2 emissions, provide further energy security and provide it with the additional infrastructure required to accommodate its further growth within the plant-based category.
In November the Irish News reported that an authorised biography has been commissioned to chronicle the life story of the late Denis Lynn.
Biteback, the UK’s leading publisher of political and current affairs titles, will publish ‘Running Out of Time’ in hardback in early 2026, written by Jago Pearson, who was chief strategy officer at Finnebrogue from 2018 until earlier this year and who continues to sit on the company’s board as a non-executive director.
