GIANT wholesale firm Booker has seen the loss-making UK operations of Makro, which it bought last year, move into profit.
Booker overall sales increased by 17% to £4.7bn, pre-tax profits were up 25% at £118.7m. Wilson expects the acquisition will increase the group’s ability to deliver to customers and as a result to grow web-based and other sales. With Makro it has the capacity to grow sales to £6bn, he said.
Retail sales director Steve Fox said sales to Premier symbol group retailers were up 12%. Like-for-like sales to retailers were down by 0.5% largely because of declines in tobacco sales. Non-tobacco like-for-likes were up 4.4%.