The Plymouth-headquartered maker of some of the Ƶ’s most popular confectionery saw profits slide by £73m due to the Covid pandemic, it can be revealed.
Newly published financial statements for Mars Wrigley Confectionery Ƶ Ltd show the company made a profit of £55m in 2020.
But this was down from the £128m profit it made the year before sales were disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, with retail outlets closed and impulse purchasers confined to home, and fell by £152m.
South West manufacturing news
The vast Mars Wrigley Plymouth factory is the Ƶ headquarters of the American-owned firm. More than 530 employees work at a site where every day more than four million packets of chewing gum are manufactured.
Production was maintained at the Estover plant in 2020, Mars Wrigley’s only Ƶ factory, during the pandemic but it temperature-tested workers at the start of shifts and took other safety precautions.
The firm said it would not pay a dividend to its shareholders due to the Covid-related slump.
A strategic report included with the accounts said that the 2020 Covid-19 outbreak in the Ƶ caused “significant financial market downturn and social dislocation”.
It said the pandemic, and its lockdowns, had an adverse effect on sales “with the impact of lockdown resulting in a drop in footfall in key outlets and a drip in consumer impulse purchases across a range of categories”.
Turnover fell to £1.05bn from £1.2bn in 2019 and the report said: “Sales and gross profit margin fell as a result of Covid-19 restrictions implemented in 2020 as well as other operational challenges during the period.”
But it stressed: “The company is well placed, due to investment into the products, brands, processes and consumer relationships, to see this improve going forward.”
The company, whose net assets actually grew by more than £50m to £796.4m during 2020, said the 2020 performance nonetheless reflected ongoing investment and a strategy to “reflect and adapt to anticipated changes in consumer attitudes and behaviour”.
Wrigley Ƶ produces more than a dozen brands of gum, including Extra, Airwaves, Hubba Bubba, Tunes, Lockets, Starburst and Skittles..
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The Plymouth factory has views of picturesque countryside, deer graze in its grounds and there is a mental and physical health plan for workers at all times – and it was named among the best places to work in the Ƶ in 2017.
That year Wrigley marked its 90th year of manufacturing in the Ƶ, having opened its first factory in Wembley in 1927. Relocating in 1970, the factory has been situated in Plymouth ever since.
