John Henderson, the family-owned group whose business interests include the franchise for Spar, Eurospar and Vivo in Northern Ireland, supermarkets and a food service business, has reported pretax profits of £21.9 million for 2015 on a turnover of £659.1 million.

The group, which employs 3,017 people, owns and operates 79 supermarket and trades under licence at a further six stores.

Henderson, which is run by brothers; Martin and Geoffrey Agnew, also operates the Vivoxtra and Vivo Essentials franchises and supplies a further 343 independently owned retail outlets across the North.

The group, which comprises four companies and has been in business for more than 100 years, reported a 0.7 per cent dip in turnover last year.

Distorted

However, it said two factors had distorted the outcome.

“Firstly 2015 turnover has been affected by the deflationary impact of the price of fuel during the year as a consequence of the international decline in the cost of crude oil and corresponding drop in the retail price of fuel which was in the order of 13.9 per cent year on year.”

It said fuel volume sales had actually risen 6.7 per cent and, had the price remained static, it would have increased reported turnover by £23.5 million.

Trading in the 2014 accounting period also benefited from an extra trading week which, the accounts state, added an additional £12,500,000 to sales in that year.

During 2015, Henderson opened nine new Eurospar supermarkets and 14 additional Spar stores, spending more than £16.7 million over the 12 month period. It is also in the process of investing £25 million to redevelop its group headquarters in Mallusk and build additional warehousing.