Food group serves up rise in turnover
Pie and pastry firm also boosts staff numbers as its investment drive continues
BELLS Food Group, the Shottsbased pie and pastry maker, has grown its turnover by four per cent to £16.2 million and boosted staff numbers as it prepares for the middle phase of a three-year, multi-millionpound investment plan.
Managing director Ronnie Miles has revealed the company has so far spent £2.1m of a planned £3.6m expansion fund to expand capacity at its bakeries in Shotts.
“There are exciting times ahead,” said Mr Miles. “I’ve tried to fast track some of the investment so we can get on with creating jobs and selling more.” Mr Miles said the company was 14 months into the plan.
“We wanted to create 25 jobs over a three-year period but we’ve done that over 14 months,” he added.
That takes the total employee numbers to 205 jobs.
Among the recent recruits is former 5pm.co.uk commercial director Gordon Smith as sales and marketing director, who Mr Miles said had a “fantastic background” in marketing and would help drive the company’s proposition in a grocery market that is being heavily influenced by the rise of Aldi and Lidl.
The investment plans include the installation of a new spiral freezer and pastry laminator at the Dykehead bakery, which will double manufacturing and storage capacity.
This will help the company grow its pie sales, said Mr Miles. That range of pies, available in all major supermarkets, has been expanded with the addition of three deep-filled pies in Mince and Onion, Chicken; and Steak and Haggis. “We sell 500,000 of our pie shell products every week. It’s a phenomenal number,” said Mr Miles. “We’ve undergone a rebranding over recent months and we’ve got a multitude of products set to launch from September onwards,” he added.
Bells’s market share of the pie sector is 53 per cent, said Mr Miles.
“We’re so strong in Scotland that we’re the number two pie manufacturer in the UK, which is a fantastic achievement for a small company based in Shotts,” said Mr Miles.
Of the company’s £16.2m turnover, just under £12m is in pies, with the balance coming from pastry and “a little bit” of cake.
Pastry is one of the fastest growing areas of the business, however. “We supply retail pastry to all major supermarkets and also a range of pastry shapes – so for example if you go to supermarket and buy salmon en croute, it’s not our salmon but it’s our pastry,” said Mr Miles. “That’s a key growth area for us.”
Value-added pastry, as the company calls it, is currently worth £2.3m, having grown 34 per cent in the last year. “And that’s purely the commercial side,” said Mr Miles. “Retail pastry is over and above that.”
The grwth, he said, was down to quality of the product. “We’re good at it, we’ve been doing it for 85 years. It’s a traditional recipe on modern equipment.”
He added that customer service satisfaction levels of 99.6 per cent also helped. “A lot of customers have stuck with Bells and are attracted to Bells because of our service levels,” he said.
Mr Miles said the company was in a strong enough position to be sheltered from the current economic uncertainty.
“I don’t think anyone as of today knows what’s going to happen,” he said. “We’ve got the right people in place, we’ve invested a lot in equipment. And we’ve got a highly experienced management team so regardless what happens, we’re strong we’ve got a good brand share. We’ll adapt; we’re flexible and innovative.”