14 Chairman’s Statement/Continued


Finsbury Food Group Annual Report and Accounts 2020


The Chief Executive’s review outlines in more detail the progress we have made, however, I would like to pick out three examples:


With the business on a sound financial footing, in the near-term we will continue to prioritise the health and safety of our colleagues while carefully managing our resources and operations to meet the returning demand in a sustainable way.


• IT has been a key investment theme in recent periods and is now at a level of maturity where we have standardised management information across the sites and can use it to keep introducing new initiatives to further drive productivity and efficiency gains across the Group;


• More broadly, the Company-wide rollout of professional communications software such as Workplace by Facebook and Microsoft Teams has made collaboration and sharing of information across the Group during the pandemic easier than it was before the lockdown restrictions were introduced; and


• In April we completed the migration of our third-party training academy online. This meant that several projects that otherwise would have had to have been put on hold were able to go ahead.


Delivery Down to the Hard Work and Commitment of our Team The coronavirus pandemic has tested the mettle of everyone at Finsbury and I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to them all for the way they have responded, particularly in adapting to the new ways of working. Their courage, dedication and professionalism in the face of adversity has been first class, from the senior leadership team through to those in our bakeries and countless others whose efforts have meant we could continue to make a contribution to keeping the UK’s food shelves stocked.


Dividend The Board withdrew the interim dividend of 1.23 pence per share on 29 March 2020 and have decided not to propose a final dividend in the context of the continued uncertainty surrounding the pandemic and Brexit. The Board is minded to reinstate a dividend for F21 and will provide an update as these unknowns pass and our outlook is more certain.


Board The Board composition remains unchanged since last reported and we continue to comply to the QCA Corporate Governance Code. The Board met at sites as usual until March and since then has met using online meeting facilities and will continue to do so until it is felt safe to go back to meeting on sites.


Positioning the Business for Growth After the initial impact, we are starting to see some positive monthly sales trends that hint at the beginnings of a recovery. Furloughed staff at its peak totalled 534; by 31 August 2020 the number had reduced to 94. The outlook now versus where it was when the pandemic first took hold is much improved, but with market volatility likely to persist, it remains difficult to predict with any accuracy the rate at which the recovery will take place.


With the business on a sound financial footing, in the near term we will continue to prioritise the health and safety of our colleagues while carefully managing our resources and operations to meet the returning demand in a sustainable way.


Longer-term, we remain just as focused on our goal of becoming the leading speciality bakery group as we ever were. Finsbury is a fundamentally strong business engineered to be resilient, and for all the negatives associated with the crisis, there is no doubt it has accelerated a number of positive operational improvements which will benefit the Group for many years to come.


Coronavirus risks and Brexit uncertainty remain, but with the good work we have done before and during the pandemic to improve and refine our working practices, we are confident we will emerge a stronger, more streamlined and efficient organisation.


Peter Baker Non-Executive Chairman 18 September 2020


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