Last week, colleagues across our sites came together to celebrate an engaging and impactful Food Safety & Quality Week. At Worksop, teams took part in quizzes, black bag audits and interactive sessions focused on strengthening our food safety culture and supporting continuous learning. Colleagues also embraced an escape room challenge, putting their critical thinking and problem-solving skills to the test as they worked through key control point scenarios. Our Ashford colleagues enjoyed a wide range of creative and educational activities. These included a pirate-themed treasure hunt centred on good manufacturing practices, a PPE catwalk and much more.
At the start of the year, our St Albans Head Office welcomed two exceptional T-Level students from Oaklands College to undertake work placements within our Learning & Development team. Now several months on, hear directly from Julia Leinz and Kaytelyn Lockyear as they reflect on their experience at Premier Foods so far in this short video.
We’ve recently released our Full Year Results for the 52 weeks to 28 March 2026, delivering further progress against our growth strategy. Our portfolio of leading brands continued to perform strongly, driving full year branded sales growth of 3.4%, with second half growth of 4.7%. This resulted in Trading Profit of more than £200m, ahead of our previously raised expectations. We also announced a 20% increase in our final dividend and the Board currently plans to introduce an interim dividend from November, reflecting our strong performance and the cash generating capacity of the business.
Towards the end of last year, we hosted two successful T-Level assessment centres, supporting the next generation of talent as captured in this video, commissioned by the Department for Education. At our PAS site, we welcomed Science T-Level students from Buckinghamshire College for a full mock assessment centre. They explored the site and its impact across the scientific, food and drink industries, took part in a group activity, and completed individual interviews to build their confidence and professional skills. We’re thrilled that five of these students have now begun their 315‑hour industry placement with us as of 3rd November 2025. Following this success, our St Albans Head Office hosted a similar experience for Business T-Level students from Oaklands College. After an office tour, an assessed activity and interviews with our HR team, two exceptional students have accepted placements within our L&D function, these started in February.
We’re proud to partner with Neighbourly to support our colleague volunteering programme. Neighbourly’s platform connects Premier Foods with more than 45,000 local charities and community causes in need of support, helping us make a meaningful impact where it matters most. Since the start of our partnership in September 2023, Neighbourly has helped connect colleague volunteers with 31 different good causes, supporting over 16,000 people and generating a social impact of £35,000. A huge thank you to everyone who has taken part so far. 👉 You can read more about our Enriching Life Plan here https://lnkd.in/eUuAXSC2
For #NationalApprenticeshipWeek we’re showcasing different colleagues each day, meet Tia Hall, a Customer Finance Apprentice at our St Albans Head Office. “I was attracted to Premier Foods’ apprenticeship scheme because I’d always wanted to work in finance and I really liked their market-leading brands. The best thing about my apprenticeship is that it’s opened the door to so many opportunities. I joined at 18 on a Level 4 apprenticeship, and after completing it I was offered the chance to progress to a Level 7 apprenticeship (equivalent to a master’s degree), which will qualify me as an accountant once finished, an opportunity I gratefully seized.” Our apprenticeship opportunities for 2026/27 will be going live over the next few weeks. Go to https://lnkd.in/d8BVzXZ and join our talent network to be notified when applications open.
At our Ashford site "The home of Bachelors", we’ve been trying something a little different. Over the past year, our leadership team has been rethinking how we communicate with our teams — not just what we say, but how we say it. With 450 colleagues to engage, our quarterly briefings could easily become long, slide-heavy sessions. So we decided to mix things up. Instead of endless graphs and presentations, we’ve turned our briefings into something far more interactive and memorable. What began as a few Kahoot! quizzes has evolved into full-scale recreations of classic TV game shows. For our most recent Q3 briefings, that meant ten live Family Fortunes quiz shows in one day, with 20 factory “families” stepping up to play for prizes. There was a quiz show set, a fully working scoreboard… and yes, a gold sequined jacket that’s now a regular feature. It was great fun, but more importantly, it helped us share key updates and priorities in a way that felt inclusive, energising, and genuinely engaging. Lots of laughs, plenty of learning, and a great example of how we try to bring our culture to life every day.
Well done to colleagues who continued their commitment to volunteering in our local communities right through to the end of 2025, as we work towards our goal of 1000 days volunteered a year by 2030. Here are some highlights from December: • Our HR colleagues rolled up their sleeves at Gratitude, helping to make mince pies and spread some festive cheer. • Colleagues from our Asda and Breakfast Sales teams spent the day at a women’s refuge centre at St. Margaret's Methodist Church in Luton where they got involved with painting and decorating. • A team from Manchester volunteered with FeedoNeedo, sorting and distributing food donations. Another colleague joined a Bury Council led clean up, collecting an incredible 30 bags of rubbish across the city. • Colleagues from Carlton helped serve a Christmas dinner to 130 guests at the Boatman’s Rest for the Butterflies Dementia Group, making the day truly special for everyone involved.
As part of our Enriching Life Plan, we're committed to reducing our scope 1 and 2 emissions by 67% by 2030, targeting net zero by 2040. Recently our first major installation of solar panels went live at our Stoke bakery where we make Mr Kipling products. They're forecast to produce around a quarter of the base requirements at the factory and more investment in solar generation is on its way for other manufacturing sites.
We're happy to have been shortlisted again by RATEMYPLACEMENT as one of the 50 best small to medium sized schemes for student work placements. Good luck to everyone for the awards ceremony on March 6th.
