The parent company of brands such as Mr Kipling, Premier Foods, saw its operating profit increase by 11.9% to £73.2m in the first half of the financial year.

The FMCG company saw its revenue grow by 0.2% to £502.1m, with a strong performance in the sweet treats category in the first half.

Premier Foods saw sweet treats branded revenue increase by 9.4%, with innovative new products released by brands including Mr.Kipling driving growth.

Premier Foods CEO Alex Whitehouse said: “We’ve continued to make strong progress across all our strategic pillars in the first half of the year. In quarter 2, our UK branded revenue stepped up, growing by 3.0%, led by another very strong Sweet Treats performance of +7.4%, together with a strengthened UK grocery performance.

Subscribe to Grocery Gazette for free

Sign up here to get the latest grocery and food news each morning

“Looking forward to the remainder of the year, we expect branded revenue growth to build, supported by both a particularly exciting product innovation programme and increased H2 marketing investment across a broader range of digital communication platforms. In terms of capital investment, we expect to spend around £55m this year, which will deliver attractive returns.

“We’ll be driving benefits from the Merchant Gourmet acquisition and integration, and we continue to explore additional inorganic opportunities which fit our M&A criteria. With this continued strong strategic momentum, we remain on track to deliver on full-year trading profit expectations.”

However, grocery-branded revenue decreased by 0.5%. Moving forward, company is confident that it is on track to achieve its forecasted full-year profit.