Crawshaw promises meaty results for full year

Butcher-shop group Crawshaw has lifted its profit guidance for the full year, and will later this week welcome a new chief executive poached from Lidl.

The AIM-listed "meat-focused retailer", said it expected its out-turn for the full year to the end of January 2015 to be "materially higher than the current market forecast".

Even with investment in its growth plan for the year, the company has enjoyed a surge in average customer spend, with all stores across the group trading profitably.

Crawshaw said like-for-like sales for the year to January were up 5%, building on the increase of 11% in the previous year, coming after the group notified a few weeks ago that cash margins had increased year-on-year.

Chairman Richard Rose said: "Our average spend continues to increase reflecting the excellent quality and value we offer. All our stores are profitable and we are excited about the planned shop openings in the near future plus the arrival of our new CEO in the next week."

Joining the retailer after 16 years at Lidl, Noel Collett is due to take up his role as chief executive on 1 March.

He has held a number of senior leadership roles in the UK and Germany for the discount retailer, and for the last 12 years has served as Lidl's chief operating officer for the UK business.

Crawshaw noted that Collett had been an instrumental figure in transforming Lidl from a low-cost brand to a high-quality value retailer and for overseeing the Lidl portfolio growth from 200 stores to over 600 stores.