By Scott Wright
MACFARLANE Group has declared it expects to see weaker growth in sales to e-commerce customers throughout the rest of 2022, after a sluggish start in the first few months of the year.
The Glasgow-packaging specialist reported yesterday that the recovery of sales to the hospitality and industrial sectors had been offset by weakness in e-commerce, compared with the same period last year, in the period since January 1. E-commerce sales are expected to remain weak, though the company said it made a “solid start” to 2022 overall, with first-quarter sales and profits from continuing operations running ahead of last year.
The company told the stock market: “We expect weaker sales in the e-commerce sector to continue for the remainder of the year, offset by recovery in the industrial and hospitality sectors and the benefit of new business wins. Macfarlane will continue to manage inflationary pressures in input prices and operating costs, mainly labour, energy and transport.”
Macfarlane noted that sales at its dominant packing distribution division had grown by 16% since the start of the year. The uplift has been driven by supplier-driven price increases and the acquisition of Carters Packaging (Cornwall) in March 2021.
The company’s manufacturing operations division grew sales by 93%, boosted by the acquisition of GWP Holdings in February 2021, and a strong performance from its design and manufacture business, which mainly serves industrial markets.
Chairman Stuart Paterson said: “We have consistently demonstrated our ability to address the challenges in the market and we are confident that the effectiveness of our strategy.”
Macfarlane held its annual meeting in Glasgow yesterday. All resolutions were passed.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here