Frozen food retailer Iceland Foods has seen a 16% jump in life-for-like sales as “more and more customers” have re-discovered frozen food.
Sales for the 52 weeks to 27 March were up 16% to £2.08bn, with net profits before tax up a massive 84% at £113.7m.
Iceland chief executive Malcolm Walker said: “These record results underline the scale of the sustained recovery we have achieved at Iceland since I and my senior management colleagues returned to the business in February 2005.
“The key to our success has been a simple strategy of focusing on the things we do best as the UK’s acknowledged expert in frozen food.
“We have worked hard to ensure that our range of frozen food is unsurpassed in value, quality growth and innovation, and also offer our customers excellent everyday value in their daily purchases of grocery and chilled foods.
“We have continued to increase our market share and our shoppers are spending more of their weekly budget at Iceland than ever before.
“Our Bonuscard loyalty scheme, launched nationally during the year, already has more than 2.5 million members.
“In January we announced the acquisition of 51 former Woolworths outlets which will be re-opening as Iceland stores during the current year, in addition to the 20 new stores we had already planned.
“This will create a total of some 3,500 new jobs across the UK.
“We also have a further 20 to 30 new stores in the pipeline to continue our ambitious opening programme into 2010.
“More and more customers are rediscovering the benefits of frozen food: no mess, no fuss, no waste.
“This is helping Iceland to maintain strong progress even in the current difficult economic climate, with like-for-like sales currently showing double digit growth for the fifth consecutive year.”
