Food manufacturer Greencore has hailed an acceleration in its profit recovery, despite its sales dipping in the first half of the year.

In the 26 weeks ending 29 March, pre-tax profit hit £14.7m, from a £6.2m loss the prior year.

However, sales at the manufactuer, which supplies all the major UK supermarkets, fell by -6.4% from £925.8m last year to £866.1m as chief executive Dalton Philips pointed to a “difficult consumer spending environment”.

With a “seasonally stronger half” ahead of it, the food manufacturer expects full-year profits to come in ahead of current expectations and hit between £86 to £88m.

Philips said: “Greencore delivered excellent progress against its strategic priorities in the first half and continued to outperform the market in a difficult consumer spending environment.

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“The group’s accelerating financial performance is very encouraging as we focus on driving profitability and returns. We are working with our major retail customers to develop new products and new offerings which are driving the growth of our Food to Go segment ahead of the market.

“We have exited low margin business and are undertaking a range of actions to increase the returns profile of each element of the portfolio. We have many opportunities to continue to grow our business profitability and have commenced investing in our IT infrastructure to create a solid platform for growth and enable further efficiency gains across the group.”

Greencore flagged that it has secured new large ready meals contracts, which will be onboarded at its Kiveton site in late fourth quarter of 2024.

Other changes include consolidating its soup business into a single site, in a bid to ramp up its efficiency, and a reduction of £9.8m in annual UK pension funding contributions from September 2025.