Strong growth in 2020 earnings for Bestway Wholesale  

Bestway Wholesale today reported strong annual results, with EBITDA for the trading year to June 2020 rising by 81.8 per cent year on year.

The earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) stood at £37.9 million for the company’s 2020 financial year, up from £20.8m for the same period in 2019.

Revenues in the Bestway Wholesale group – which includes Bestway Wholesale Limited, Bestway Northern Limited, Bestway Property Limited, MAP Limited and Bestway Retail Limited – grew 1.4 per cent to £2.55 billion in 2020.

The group said the increased revenues and profitability come in the backdrop of a challenging market conditions for the wholesale, with the catering sector being impacted heavily in the last quarter by Covid.

“Throughout the onset of Covid in 2020, we moved with agility and spent significant time and resources in ensuring all sites were robust from a health and safety perspective. This was a key priority to ensure protection for both our team here at Bestway, and our customers – whether in depot or for delivered services,” Dawood Pervez, managing director of Bestway Wholesale, said.

“We continued to improve and manage availability of products during this period which resulted positively on sales and during the year we continued to help our customers increase their margins and profitability. We have also continued to champion the interests of independent retailers – as has been our heritage for 45 years now.”

Pervez noted that the group’s commitment to “delivering improved service and convenience to customers proved to be the right approach” despite several other challenges emerged last year in the wholesale sector.

“The year to end June 2020 saw new challenges with pressure from the grocery sector continuing with major supermarkets such as Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsburys entering the wholesale market. As a sector, we also had to absorb the continued impact of the National Living Wage as well as the additional costs and associated uncertainty surrounding the pandemic and Brexit,” he said.

“The continued focus and investment in the supply chain (and the business as a whole), has helped us offer better service levels alongside a growing emphasis on our online and digital strategies, which have been a catalyst in meeting the needs and changing behaviours of both our customers and the end consumer.”

Pervez emphasised that during this year the Bestway team have remained focussed on the integration of Bestway Retail into the business and delivering the associated scale benefits, bringing together Bargain Booze, Wine Rack, Costcutter and sub- brands Mace, Kwiksave, Simply Fresh, Supershop and best-one as one team.

The acquisition of Costcutter Supermarkets Group, completed in early 2021, enhanced the group’s retail proposition by a further 1,500 stores.