Strong NPD behind Graham’s The Family Dairy’s annual results
Graham’s The Family Dairy saw a 4.7% rise in turnover, up £4.9m in 2018 to £109m this year. The family-owned business laid its success down to continued new product development and innovation.
Profit before tax at £2.2m, is up from last year and the dairy also reported a strong 2019 EBITDA performance of £4.62m. A clear focus on authentic family brand values and development of brand message, as well as continued business innovation, new product development (NPD) and growth; the dairy business has made a total capex investment of £5.6m this year.
2018 saw the successful launch of Graham’s Skyr, a Scandinavian-style cultured dairy product naturally high in protein. Exceeding all sales expectations, to date Skyr is Graham’s best performing new product launch and is available across the UK, as well as now being exported to the Republic of Ireland, France and UAE.
Expanding the high protein range, from March 2019, Graham’s launched its Goodness range, introducing a new low-calorie ice cream and flavoured cottage cheese. The ice cream, developed for the UK market, was in direct response to the low calorie and lower in sugar ice cream currently trending in the US.
The dairy also added to its number of stars at the 2019 Great Taste Awards, winning accolades for Goodness Espresso Caramel ice-cream, Goodness Black Cherry Cottage Cheese, Organic Unsalted Butter, Scottish Salted Butter, Organic Whole milk with cream on top and Natural Quark.
Robert Graham, managing director at Graham’s the Family Dairy, said: “As a third-generation family business, I am very proud to be celebrating the 80th year of the business that was started with twelve cows by my grandparents in 1939 at Airthrey Kerse in Bridge of Allan, Scotland.
“We pride ourselves, not only on working hard to produce high quality and great tasting products, but also being dynamic and innovative to meet developing consumer trends that are very much aligned to dairy products. It is very important that we continue to grow margins in order to be able to continue to invest into the business and keep up this pace of innovation.
“New product development is a key priority for us to enable us to meet developing consumer trends for great tasting, naturally functional dairy products made with fresh Scottish milk. This clear focus has led to us investing £5.6m in the business this year alone”.
