A near 300-year-old British business has predicted a bright future for itself after announcing another year of strong sales and profit growth.

Whitbread, originally formed in 1742 and now owner of the Costa Coffee and Premier Inn chains, has reported an annual group total sales growth of 8.2 per cent and an underlying profit before tax up 6.2 per cent to £565.2million.

Premier Inn's total sales growth went up by nine per cent, while Costa's rose by 10.7 per cent.

In a trading report, Whitbread CEO Alison Brittain said: "In 2016/17 we made good progress in delivering on our three strategic priorities: to grow and innovate in our core UK businesses; to focus on our strengths to grow internationally; and to build the capability and infrastructure to support long-term growth.

"Premier Inn's strong sales growth benefited from the 3,816 gross new UK rooms we opened this year and the accelerated maturity of the c.9,000 rooms we have opened over the last two years.

"We delivered high customer satisfaction by leading the market on quality and value, achieved occupancy of over 80 per cent with record levels of direct bookings at 94 per cent, all of which supported our strong return on capital.

"Costa opened 255 net new stores worldwide and we continue to roll out our successful and fast growing Costa travel formats.

"Costa Express had a great year installing over 1,500 machines of which 248 were in international markets.

"We are innovating to drive our sales growth and are pleased with the investment we are making to introduce 'finer' coffee concepts, leveraging our new state of the art Roastery and delivering fresher food that our customers will enjoy later this year.

"In the year ahead we will continue to focus on organic growth and investing in our customer proposition.

"This, together with our efficiency programme and disciplined capital management gives us confidence in delivering another year of good progress, in line with overall expectations.

"Whilst we are only seven weeks into our new financial year Premier Inn has had a good start to the year and Costa has also seen positive like-for-like sales growth, although we remain cautious and expect a tougher consumer environment than last year.

"In the longer term we remain confident that, with our significant structural growth opportunities, the power of our brands and the investments we are making, we will continue to deliver strong returns and sustainable long-term growth for our shareholders."

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