A 55% rise in average annual profits over the past three years has put Longleat Enterprises, the Warminster leisure firm that operates the famous safari park and Cheddar Gorge and Caves, among the UK’s fast-growth firms for the first time.
The firm, which employs just over 700 people across its sites, appears this weekend in the latest annual Sunday Times BDO Profit Track 100 league table, which ranks Britain’s private companies with the fastest-growing profits over three years.
Longleat Enterprises, which is based on the giant Longleat Estate, is owned by The Marquess of Bath, Viscount Weymouth, and the trustees of the Longleat Estates. Its pioneering 9,000-acre safari park – the UK’s first and initially famous for its roaming lions – is now home to 500 animals.
It makes its debut in the table at number 95, rubbing shoulders with rapid-growth national groups such as sandwich shop chain Pret A Manger and gym operator PureGym.
Its profits came in at £3.5m this year as it benefited from increased visitor numbers, boosted by TV exposure on the BBC’s popular Animal Park series. Profits grew by an average of 55% over the past three years.
The highest-ranking South West company is Bristol-based Caribbean restaurant chain Turtle Bay, which has an outlet in Bath.
Chief executive Ajith Jayawickrema used his experience setting up Las Iguanas to establish Turtle Bay in 2010. It has since grown to 42 sites in the UK, and two in Germany. Profits grew by an average of 70% to £12.0m in 2017.
Despite cost pressures caused in part by the fall in value of Sterling, all 100 companies in the table increased sales and average profit margins rose from 8% to 15%.
The league table and awards programme is sponsored by BDO and UBS Wealth Management, and is compiled by Fast Track, the Oxford-based research and networking events firm.
BDO partner and South West head Andrea Bishop said: “These high-growth, high-energy and highly-entrepreneurial companies will be the difference between success and failure in our post-Brexit economic future.
“These businesses are playing their part by recording strong levels of revenue and profit growth and by creating jobs. We’d like to see the government do more to help them by focusing on skills, infrastructure investment and tax simplification.”
This year’s Profit Track 100 companies achieved, on average, profit growth of 77% a year over three years, to a total of £1.1bn in 2016/17. Together they employ 52,600 staff, having added 20,000 employees to their combined workforce over the period, some as a result of acquisitions.
The full league table will be published as a six-page broadsheet supplement in the business section of The Sunday Times this Sunday, both in print and in the digital edition, and on www.fasttrack.co.uk
