Frozen food retailer Farmfoods has reported a 19% jump in sales to make it one of the top 100 privately owned companies in Britain, according to the Scotsman website.
The Scottish firm, which was established 50 years ago in Aberdeen, boosted turnover to £421.3m (US$740m), from £354m the year previously, according to its latest accounts.
And pre-tax profits were improved by 15% to £9.8m, from £8.5m last time.
The growth, most of which has come in the past two years, has helped push the company – majority owned by Eric Herd, the publicity-shy Bridge of Allan-based tycoon – firmly into the upper ranks of Britain’s leading private firms and in Scottish terms it rubs shoulders with the likes of motor dealer Arnold Clark and car repair-to-insurance services company Kwik-Fit.
Farmfoods currently has more than 300 British stores, including 104 in Scotland. But the Cumbernauld-based group is actively chasing further expansion and has Edinburgh-based property agent Eric Young and Company scouring Scotland for further properties in places such as Leith, Kelso, Haddington, Falkirk and Helensburgh.

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By GlobalDataSome suppliers have said that supermarket giant Tesco has built its recent success partly by adopting the kind of low-price modelling used by the likes of Farmfoods and peers such as Lidl, Netto and Aldi.
Herd, is the company’s main shareholder after buying out his brother Gordon’s 21.2% stake for £10.2m in January.
According to the company’s latest set of accounts which revealed the group’s phenomenal growth, Herd, who has a near-99% stake in Farmfoods, paid himself about £1m last year.
William McCreadie, nother director at the firm, owns the remaining 1.4% of Farmfoods, whose success in recent years has had experts in the food retailing sector tipping the firm as a takeover target.