East of England Co-op has announced a return to profit, with a £4.6m turnaround from 2024 delivering £1m trading surplus for the year to 25 January.
In its report, the society credits the result to a year of considered investment and reshaping of its business portfolio.
Turnover was £385.7m, £10m down on the previous year, and pre-tax profit was £3.8m, up £13.3m. Members’ funds are £229.6m, up £1.5m.
“We’re proud to be announcing a return to profit this year,” said CEO Andy Rigby. “This is an ambition we’ve been working towards for the past three years so it’s a moment for us to celebrate as we mark the start of an exciting period of growth. The next challenge for us is ensuring this profit is sustainable for our co-op and the colleagues, members and community that make us.”
Addressing the challenging economic landscape, Rigby added: “Rising costs are still having an impact on businesses and communities in our region and across the country. We’re continuing to feel the impact of this challenging financial situation. Our return to profit is a monumental achievement in the current financial landscape but we’re realistic that it’s a challenge we’ll continue to face as we make our return to profit sustainable.”
Turning to the society’s growth, Rigby said: “For the second year running we’ve grown our business into new territories, with our family of businesses now operating across five counties for the first time in our 155-year history. Following the successful expansion of our food business into Cambridgeshire in 2023, we opened our first Hertfordshire Food store in Bishop’s Stortford this summer.
“As we celebrate our return to profit and growing our business, we also recognise that this has been a year of difficult decisions. We’ve been reshaping our store portfolio, making sure we’ve got the right stores in the right places. Our reshape has led to the closure of our stonemasonry business H.L. Perfitt, the proposed leasing of three of our supermarkets to new operators and placing 13 branches across our food and funeral business as well as our central office, Wherstead Park on the market for sale.
“We’ve made these decisions with the future sustainability of our co-op, its members, customers and colleagues as our top priority. Our focus is on investing in the refinement and growth of our business, providing new, modern facilities for our members, customers and clients in new locations throughout the East of England.”
The society says it invested more than £5m in refurbishing 12 of food stores. Alongside a range of new food to go services, including freshly squeezed orange juice, hot and frozen drinks and ice cream, it fitted new energy-efficient refrigeration and lighting – plus a further five solar panel arrays which could save 49 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
In December, East of England opened a state-of-the-art funeral branch in Norwich, following a £4.5m investment. This followed the opening of the society’s first guneral branch in Thetford in May.
In a year that saw record travel sales, the co-op also opened its first travel branch in Woodbridge, inside its food store on Hamblin Walk.
In e-commerce, it began a new partnership with Quadient, installing smart lockers in its Hadleigh and Framlingham stores, offering parcel services through Royal Mail, DPD, Evri, In-Post, Amazon and UPS.
In December, the society announced Barclays as its new banking partner – “part of our ambitious growth plans. With a £30.0m Revolving Credit Facility and overdraft, this new partnership will support our co-op as we continue to expand our trading area, open new stores and branches, refurbish our existing estate and invest,” adds the report.
Speaking of the society’s community support, Rigby said: “We’re proud of the positive impact we’ve had. Our driving force always has and always will be to make a difference. The economic challenges we’ve been facing are felt across our communities too, so this year we made it easier than ever to get support from our co-op, resulting in us supporting more than 700 charities and good causes.
“Since 2020 we’ve directly supported over 140,000 people through our Community Cares Fund and this year, we established our four key community programmes to make it more straightforward for our communities to reach out for help. Whether it’s a grant for a life changing project, a chance to raise awareness in one of our branches or a donation to a raffle prize, we’ve made it simpler than ever to work with our communities to create a better place for us all.”
He added: “I’m expecting another year filled with both opportunities and challenges. We remain a business in transition. We have an exciting pipeline of new stores and branches and will be continuing our refurbishment programme. In our journey to sustainable profit, we’ll need to continue our investment in our estate and in the technology that helps us to drive efficiencies. However, we’ll also need to absorb the increases in the National Living Wage and National Insurance contributions. Being profitable allows us to continue building our co-operative for the next generation so this must be our focus.”
“I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved with our co-op. By working together, we continue to use our resources to make a positive local impact. The biggest thank you must go to our colleagues. Without their hard work and dedication none of this year’s success would have been possible. They continue to be our biggest strength and I’m proud of the work each and every one of them have delivered for our co-op this year.”
