The company reported turnover of £214 million in the year ending January 31 2025
Food and drink wholesaler JW Filshill, one of Scotland’s oldest independent food and drink wholesalers, saw turnover remain stable – in line with the overall market trend – at £214 million in the year ending January 31, 2025.
The fifth-generation business, based at Westway Park near Glasgow Airport, increased operating profit from £4.2m to £5m – an increase of 18.7%. Profit before tax increased by 22.8%, from £4m to £4.9m.
Filshill, which supplies KeyStore convenience stores and independent retailers across Scotland and the north of England, and national accounts including the Scottish Prison Service, continued to deliver against a clearly defined corporate strategy and ambitions for the future, as well as driving efficiency across the business.
Keith Geddes, chief financial and operating officer, at Filshill said: “This improved efficiency is more essential than ever given the increase in costs driven mainly by changes to fuel, living wage and employers’ national insurance costs.
“The company has also invested heavily in the upskilling of many employees to take full advantage of advancements in artificial intelligence and ensure that we make use of these tools across all areas of the business.
“We also continue to push forward with heavy investment in other areas of technology such as the innovative use of data, tracking software, and industry-specific opportunities such as electronic shelf-edge labels.”
On the company’s environmental commitments, Geddes said: “During the year, our environmental team worked on several initiatives to reduce our carbon footprint and identify areas where we can positively influence a reduction in our carbon impact and work towards a net-zero emissions position.
“We made number of key changes to improve our impact on the environment, including switching our delivery fleet fuel from diesel to hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) at our Westway site, and now have two fully electric 19-tonne vehicles out delivering every day.
“We are maximising their use where possible, and we engage with a number of external bodies – both in the public and private sector – to share ideas and best practice.”
Geddes noted that Scope 3 measurement and benchmarking have been a particular focus for the company. “This is a difficult project that we have invested much time, effort and money in this year, engaging with trade groups the Scottish Wholesale Association and Federation of Wholesale Distributors as well as software suppliers to begin measuring the carbon footprint of the thousands of products we buy and sell as well as the impact of packaging and staff travel,” he said.
Filshill also revealed that its CO2 usage in grams per case delivered had declined by a further 21% in the past year on top of the 14% decrease the previous year.
“The independent retail market remains highly competitive and challenging, and we seek to manage the principal risk of losing customers by aiming to deliver best-in-class customer service,” said Geddes. “Any loss of support of key suppliers in terms of supply or credit is also a key risk. To offset this, the group works hard to maintain strong partnership-based relationships with all suppliers and earlier this year was ranked number one by suppliers in an independent survey (Advantage Group Mirror report) across our key competitors for the 15th consecutive year.”
Pointing to the company’s ongoing engagement with its workforce on safety, health and wellbeing, in particular mental health, Geddes added: “We have also engaged with customers to help promote mental health and wellbeing activities across our KeyStore customers as well as within our own team.
“The company currently has over 35 fully trained mental health first aiders and we continue to drive our safety-first culture as a cornerstone of everything we do.”
As Filshill celebrates its 150th anniversary, it has ramped up its support for charities across Scotland. It is fundraising for six charities, which represent large demographics of the communities it serves.
Chosen by staff, the charities are:
CHAS (Children’s Hospices Across Scotland)
Dementia Scotland
Cancer Research UK
MND Scotland
SSPCA (Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals)
GroceryAid
