Farmfoods, the Glasgow-based frozen food retailer, has been ranked the biggest mid-market private company in Scotland - and number four in the UK - according to the latest Sunday Times Top Track 250 league table to be published this weekend.
In all, 25 Scottish companies appear on the list, which ranks the UK's top 250 firms by latest sales figures.
Farmfoods posted sales of £400.6m to December 2005, bringing it in well ahead of the next Scottish company on the list, William Grant & Sons, the Banffshire distillers, which posted sales of £352.6m and is ranked 23rd overall.
Grant's makes Glenfiddich, the world's biggest-selling single malt whisky, as well as Grant's whisky and Hendrick's gin.
The remaining top five Scottish companies on the list are, at number 39 overall, Edinburgh-based car dealers Eastern Western Motor Group at £308m; Stuart Milne, the Aberdeen housebuilder, in 55th place with sales to June 2006 of £282.6m; and whisky distillers The Edrington Group in 58th place with £278.5m sales to March 2007.
Edrington's stable of whiskies include The Famous Grouse and single malts The Macallan and Highland Park.
Farmfoods, 97%-owned by publicity-shy Bridge of Allan tycoon Eric Herd, began life in Aberdeen, expanding from just 20 outlets in the mid-1980s. During the 1990s it acquired Wallis Frozen Foods and Capital Freezer Centres. Today it is the UK's largest frozen food specialist after Iceland, with about 300 stores, more than 100 of those in Scotland.
Herd has grown the business by two-thirds since 2003, completing a £10.3m buy-out of his brother Gordon's 21.2% share in 2004.
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