Reed Boardall is continuing expand its North Yorkshire facility following a year of steady growth in revenue alongside improvements in operating efficiencies.
In line with its pre-COVID plans, the temperature controlled food storage and distribution business has undertaken work on an extension to one of the cold stores at its 55 acre site in Boroughbridge which will once again make it the largest and most modern cold store site in the UK, increasing capacity to 168,000 pallets.
Reed Boardall’s latest financial results (year ending 31 March 2020) show that underlying turnover grew by 8.9%, rising to £68.4 million from £62.8 million the previous year, driven by higher volumes through its cold store and transport operation, together with rising use of its ancillary blast freezing, picking and packing services.
Despite continued pressure on margins with increasing costs and strong competition in the transport sector, Reed Boardall proved able to implement operational efficiencies bringing an increase in profits with underlying EBITDA at £4.44 million (2019: £3.38m).
With the continued growth of its customer base across the UK, Reed Boardall has grown to become one of the largest temperature-controlled food distribution businesses in the UK with a fleet of 196 vehicles operating 24 hours a day, year round, to deliver 12,000 pallets of frozen food daily for its clients.
The business operates four state-of-the-art cold stores at its single Boroughbridge site, and has undertaken work on a 110,000sq ft extension to its newest cold store facility. The build programme to extend Cold Store 4 is expected to be completed in March 2021.
“We’ve operated in this specialist field for over 25 years and work with food processors and retailers throughout the country who rely on us for to supply their product on time and in premium condition,” said Marcus Boardall, chief executive of Reed Boardall.
“Changes in consumer shopping habits have led to food companies needing a more responsive logistics partner that is able to reliably consolidate products in order to cost-effectively deliver little and often.
“Our single site business model has proved ideal for this, resulting in a growth in demand for our services and, therefore, the need to extend our facilities.
“2019 was a particularly busy year for us as we continued to support the growth of our customers, and we again put in a solid financial performance, seeing turnover grow.
“Having already decided that the time was right to invest in expanding our cold storage facility at Boroughbridge, we were committed to moving forward with the project, undeterred by the turmoil of the pandemic which put intense pressure on the logistics sector– 2020 was a stark reminder of how important it is to have a robust and responsive supply chain.”
Finance Director Sarah Roberts added: “Given the current situation, with unprecedented demand from consumers for frozen food, we are prepared for 2021 to be another extremely busy year and would like to thank our hard working and committed team for pulling out all the stops to help our customers keep the supermarket freezers full.”
