Turnover up 8% at NFT as profit jumps too

Chilled food distribution specialist NFT has seen  its turnover and pre-tax profit rise at the same time as signing a five-year refinancing package with HSBC.

Turnover increased by 8% to £152.4m for the year-ending 31 March, from £140.9m a year ago. Pre-tax profit rose 60% from £1.4m to £2.2m.

Its shared user transport network delivered an average of 39,000 pallets a week of food and general merchandise in the financial year, an increase of 40% year-on-year. A contract with an un-named ambient customer added 7,000 pallets a week to the network.

Chief executive David Frankish says in his statement: “NFT is well placed to continue to deliver profitable growth for its stakeholders in 2013.

"We have a clear strategy to develop our chilled total logistics network capacity, enhance our nationwide coverage, deliver continual improvement to the quality of our customers supply chains and so continue to increase NFT’s share of the total UK logistics market.”

NFT has also revealed it completed a five year refinancing deal with HSBC, worth £31.6m in June. The deal sees HSBC provided £21.6m of term and property loans and £10m of working capital facilities.

Steve Dennison, financial director at NFT, says: “The banking environment is still very challenging and the deal is a demonstration of the excellent and robust financial performance of the group over the last few years. It is testament to the strength of the NFT business that HSBC has chosen to partner with NFT in the next stage of our growth story.

“The refinancing provides us with the certainty of financial resources to enable further investment and growth at NFT.”

Phoenix Equity Partners acquired NFT from Northern Foods in an MBO led by Frankish in 2006. The equity company is also a backer of pallet network Palletways.