Musgrave revenues hit €4.9bn

A first full-year’s contribution from Superquinn helped drive revenues at the Musgrave Group up by 11%, last year, to €4.9 billion.

Figures show that the Cork-headquartered grocery retail and food-service group — which also owns SuperValu, Centra and Daybreak — also delivered a pre-tax profit of €72m, up by 3% on 2011 levels, and reduced its net debt by 24% to €143m at the end of 2012. The group’s net assets rose to €462m.

Musgrave had eliminated its debt in 2010, but went from a net cash position of €21m to a debt of €187m with the 2011 €229m purchase from receivership of Superquinn.

Group chief executive, Chris Martin said that the Irish grocery market is only now showing slight signs of coming out of “several years of decline” and is only likely to grow by about 0.5% this year. He said that 2012 was “another year of challenging economic circumstances”, with companies having to sharpen their strategies to meet the changed mind-set of consumers, who are focused on spending less.

The group has already announced that it will invest heavily in its Irish operations this year, with 600 jobs being created across the SuperValu and Centra chains and 65 new stores opening. In all, about €70m will be spent across the group’s various brands during 2013.

“We still believe you have to continue to invest in a challenging market in order to come out the other end,” Mr Martin said.

Regarding the Super-quinn brand, he said that Musgrave will continue to revive its fortunes on a day-to-day/basic offering level, following “many years of under-investment”, although there is still no large-scale expansion plan, for the chain, and no immediate intention of it entering the Cork market.

Mr Martin said that the group remained fully committed to its overseas markets of Britain and Spain and that it remains open to the idea of expanding the business to new territories.

“Our focus in all three markets will be on strengthening our retail brands and exploring opportunities to take our brands further and to build on our growth agenda,” he said.

He added that Musgrave’s focus on traceability and trust in local suppliers meant that none of its retail brands were affected by the recent horsemeat scandal.