Group is well able to talk the talk with pre-tax profits of €72m in 2010

DESPITE seeing its trading environment suffer in the past few years — particularly for its core Irish operations — the Musgrave Group has consistently talked up its ability to ride out the economic storm and build for its future growth.

It was established by the Musgrave family in the late 1800s and is now Ireland’s largest grocery distributor and food wholesaler. The Cork-based business showed it wasn’t all talk earlier this year when it reported a decent set of annual results for 2010. While group sales were down by 3%, to €4.4bn; its pre-tax profit was up by the same percentage to €72m and its debt of €59m was eliminated, with the group actually closing the year with net cash of €21m.

“Despite the economic crisis in Ireland and a very tough trading environment in all our markets, we delivered a good set of results in 2010,” group chief executive Chris Martin said on the back of those results, in April.