Premium chocolatier, Thornton’s, have reported a slump in profits that has been put down to several supermarkets dropping shelf space for the iconic confectionary.
This announcement has been expected, but that doesn’t soften the blow of an 8 per cent drop in revenue in the six months leading to 10 January for the chocolate supplier.
The chain had opened up a range of high street shops across the country, touting its products directly, but a significant portion of these unprofitable stores have closed down.
Despite the closures and aiming to have just 200 stores in the country, rather than 247, the company has seen a 2.2 per cent rise in sales in its own stores.
This seems to have been too little too late however, and now the Derbyshire based producer has turned to focusing supplying other stores, particularly the big four supermarkets, Tesco, Morrisons, Asda and Sainsburys, but now two of these have cut their orders.
The unnamed stores have greatly reduced their orders. Before Christmas, pre-tax profits were reported by Thornton’s to be down by 10 per cent to £6.5 million.
It also saw shares drop by 3 per cent to 70.75p.
The chief executive of Thorntons, Jonathan Hart, has said that it is not the fault of the price war that they have suffered such losses, despite the fact that the price war has put the pressure on other suppliers.
