Earnings at Browns Food Group almost halved last year despite sales soaring 20.4%, the meat processor’s latest accounts have shown.
Turnover rose from £251.7m to £303.1m in the year to 31 December 2025, but the Scottish meat business could not prevent its pre-tax profit falling 45.7% to £9.6m.
Geopolitical pressures, raw material price rises and statutory employment cost increases all ate into its bottom line, with cost of sales ballooning by 27% to £242.8m.
They combined to dampen the benefits elicited from improved volume sales, price hikes, and a boost in sales from the acquisition of AK Stoddart and Ramsay of Carluke.
However, the company’s directors asserted that the company had “demonstrated strong resilience in the face of these challenges and still achieved a positive profit before interest and taxation and positive EBITDA [£14.7m]”.
“The company continues to focus on growing sales both via volume growth and pricing and together with margin and overhead cost controls believes it has a positive outlook to improve overall profit performance in the years ahead despite the aforementioned ongoing challenges,” they said.
Browns added that planned and completed expansions at its Hall’s of Scotland Prestwick and Brown Brothers facilities increased “the group’s capacity, capability and readiness for anticipated future growth”.
In 2024, the business outlined its ambition to grow retail pork sales in Scotland by £100m within the next five years.
The directors said Browns was “well positioned” to achieve a targeted total turnover of £500m and was focused on “working with Scottish producers to promote the nation’s pork and beef products and support the Scottish pork and beef industry to meet the growing consumer demand”.
With the business making significant investments, Browns Food Group chief executive Wayne Godfrey told The Grocer that government assistance, in the form of funding, to “help push those projects on would be appreciated”, while warning the wider meat sector faced challenging times.
“The size of a business that you need to have now to maintain a management team that will run a food factory has probably jumped … to £30m, £40m,” he said.
“The horizon coming and facing us all is sites that are not capable of reaching that level of turnover and that contribution are going to be consolidated and disappear in the coming years very quickly,” he added, while warning Browns could also have to “consolidate potential sites in 2027”.
More welcome, however, would be for retailers to source more domestic meat and “maintain a marketplace and demand for the Scottish farmer and Scottish pork” he said.
“There’s so much research in Scotland about them; about loyalty to a Scottish brand and to knowing that shoppers are fuelling their own economy,” he added. “With the right opportunities, that brand will go from strength to strength.”
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