The new owners of Staverton-based Creed Food Services say they are delighted with their £70m acquisition as the parent firm celebrates fresh figures which show a "good first half" of trading.

South Shields-based delivered wholesale business Kitwave Group PLC issued a pre-close trading update (for the six months ending April 30 2025) which indicated that trading overall had been in line with its expectations.

The report said: "This outcome has been achieved despite an environment where the Group experienced weaker demand in hospitality-related revenue, which impacted the Foodservice division's performance in the early months of the Period."

Trading in its Foodservice division (which is now the Creed component of Kitwave) improved towards the end of the period, the report said, with hospitality-related revenue recovering prior to Easter.

The report added: "The revenue performance of the Retail and Wholesale division was robust, with positive like-for-like trading over the Period".

Creed, which has some 450 employees and three depots in Staverton, Derbyshire and Buckinghamshire, was taken over in September 2024, whereupon Kitwave says it took the short-term decision to incur additional costs as it invested above the level that it had initially planned in service delivery.

"This investment," the report explained, "was made to protect customer service during the transition. Except for these costs, the Group's remaining cost base remained in line with expectations and includes the increased depreciation levels from fleet investment over recent periods. The Group continues to look to drive synergy and operational efficiency benefits to mitigate ongoing cost headwinds, such as national insurance increases, with good progress being made to date."

Ben Maxted, Chief Executive Officer of Kitwave, said: "It has been a good first half in terms of trading and operational performance, with the Group on track to meet its full year expectations."

Creed's intergration was progressing well, he said, with the team working to maximise delivery efficiencies to be gained from the firm's national network, using its expanded scale to benefit independent customers.

The report added that the Board was "delighted with the quality and performance of Creed Foodservice" as its largest and most recent acquisition: "The full benefits that are available from the completed integration of Creed have been identified and are scheduled to be achieved over the next two years."

A process of fully dovetailing the two companies will begin in H2 of 2025, while some longer-term benefits require IT system harmonisation that is now planned to be completed in early 2026.

It added: "In the meantime, the acquisition of Creed has provided the Group with a national foodservice network that offers both immediate customer opportunities and distribution efficiencies."

As in previous years, and due to the seasonality of the business, performance was weighted towards the second half of the year, Kitwave added, stating: "The Board is confident that full-year results will be in line with market expectations."

The group says its growth to date has been achieved both organically and through a strategy of acquiring "smaller, predominantly family-owned, complementary businesses in the fragmented UK grocery and foodservice wholesale market."

● Kitwave is a delivered wholesale business, specialising in selling and delivering impulse products, frozen, chilled and fresh foods, alcohol, groceries and tobacco. It was founded in 1987, following the acquisition of a single-site confectionery wholesale business based in North Shields, and supplies approximately 46,000 mainly independent customers through a network of 37 depots. Clients include independent convenience retailers, leisure outlets, vending machine operators, foodservice providers and other wholesalers, as well as leading national retailers.