About Us
Our Businesses
Investors
Responsibility
Media
Careers
About Us
Our Businesses
Investors
Responsibility
Media
Careers
Our purpose is to provide safe, nutritious and affordable food, and clothing that is great value for money. It defines our culture and values, informing our Group strategy, which is realised through our business strategies and is delivered by our operating model.
As a Group, we have a clear sense of our social purpose and we work hard to provide safe, nutritious and affordable food, and great-value clothing to millions of customers worldwide every day.
We deliver our purpose through ABF’s diverse portfolio of international food, ingredients and retail businesses, which have a significant presence across Europe, the Americas, Australia, Africa and Asia. The way in which we do this is shaped by our strong culture and values, which are lived and breathed across our businesses, whether it is in how we drive our strategies, invest for growth, serve our customers or approach our sustainability priorities.
Our culture is underpinned by our high standards of integrity, recognising that acting responsibly is the only way to build and manage a business over the long term.
We believe that most people are inherently good and that with encouragement, engagement and support they will do the right thing in the right way.
Our people are key to the innovation and action that are needed to deliver our purpose. It is through the skills and capability of our people that we can make necessary and timely progress. Our employees tend to stay with us for a long time, building exciting careers that help them fulfil their goals at work, at home and in the community.
We pride ourselves on being a first-class employer, working actively to develop our people and create opportunities for progression. Our businesses thrive on the diversity of our people, so we are investing in programmes to help remove barriers to talent. We want to attract, recruit and retain the best people, ensuring they are stimulated by the jobs they do and equipped with the skills they need to succeed.
Our Group strategy is to drive sustainable, long-term growth, cash generation and strong returns across our portfolio of food and retail businesses to create value for shareholders and other stakeholders.
We take a long-term, patient investment approach to create sustainable growth. We aim to build and acquire long-duration growth businesses that will create value and deliver strong returns.
Our portfolio of clothing retail and food businesses is well positioned for long-term growth through a focus on categories and sectors with resilient market fundamentals and geographies with favourable demographics. We select opportunities where we can create a competitive advantage to build leadership or niche market positions, typically in moderate-scale categories. Our investment decisions are influenced by strategic patience and we believe our highly-diversified portfolio, across different business activities and geographies, enables discipline and creates breadth in our opportunities for growth. We have designed a devolved operational leadership model that effectively manages the breadth, mix and long-term nature of our businesses.
Our businesses are typically highly cash generative, which enables continuous reinvestment. We are investing in our well-established, growth-engine businesses to drive expansion into new markets and adjacencies, while nurturing a substantial portfolio of smaller, early-stage businesses which have the potential to be the next generation of long-duration growth drivers.
Our ability to invest is strengthened by having several mature, lower-growth businesses within the Group that continue to deliver good profitability and cash generation.
Across our portfolio, we are investing to accelerate growth through effective marketing, innovative new product development and enhanced digital and technology capabilities. This is underpinned by continuous investment to expand our manufacturing capacity and add new capabilities. We are also investing to deliver our ESG priorities based on the most material risks, opportunities and impacts to the Group. In particular, this includes decarbonisation and social factors within our supply chains. We supplement organic growth with investment in value-creating acquisitions that bring new opportunities and capabilities. We make disposals when judged to be the best route to creating shareholder value.
Our investment approach is grounded in conservative financial management and we maintain a resilient balance sheet. This ensures long-term financial stability and creates the flexibility to fund opportunities as they arise. Our disciplined approach to capital allocation, using risk-adjusted hurdle rates, drives strong returns on capital.
Primark is a fast-growing, international value retailer with a differentiated customer proposition delivered through a digitally-enabled, store-led model. It has significant white space to increase its share of consumer spend and extend its presence in existing and new markets.
We win with customers through our strong brand, known for unbeatable prices and great quality essential clothing and fashion. We target a wide customer base across women’s, men’s and kidswear and supporting lifestyle categories such as home and beauty. We continuously evolve our ranges to meet customer needs, including through collaborations and licensing partnerships. The execution of our strategy in each market is adapted to reflect the size of the customer opportunity, the maturity of the store portfolio and local customer needs.
We aim to offer a unique store experience by finding the right spaces in the right locations and creating exciting retail destinations. We also use effective digital customer engagement as a key driver of footfall, including our website, stock checker and increasingly Click & Collect, and social media platforms. We work to maintain an ethical and responsible supply chain, and we focus on driving efficiencies and cost savings across our supply chain, store portfolio and central operations. We target strong financial returns and cash generation.
Our strategy is to drive sustainable growth across our large and diverse portfolio of both international brands and regionally-focused businesses. Growth will continue to be organic and through carefully selected acquisitions.
Our international brands, Twinings, Ovaltine, Patak’s, Blue Dragon, Jordans and Mazzetti, have a long runway for growth. Our focus is on reaching new consumers in existing markets, expanding into new markets and broadening our offer through new product development. We are investing in effective marketing and innovation to drive category growth and build market share. We benefit from our centralised manufacturing footprint for these brands.
In our regionally-focused businesses in the United Kingdom, North America, Australia and New Zealand, our focus is on driving strong cash generation over the long term. We adopt bespoke strategies to win in local markets. This includes investing in marketing to maintain brand health and support our strong local market positions.
Our strategy is to drive sustainable growth in Ingredients within focused categories, including yeast, bakery ingredients, enzymes, precision extraction, health and nutrition and pharmaceutical delivery systems.
In our yeast and bakery ingredients business, AB Mauri, we are growing our portfolio of products and solutions for industrial, craft and home bakers in our well-established regions of the Americas, Europe and Asia. Our focus is on consistent delivery and innovation for new and existing customers. This is underpinned by strong, insight-led investment in the development of new technologies and ingredients that will meet the changing needs of our customers in different local markets.
Our individual country businesses are dedicated to their local markets, backed by global expertise in bakery products, technologies and know-how. We are also expanding our portfolio of specialty yeast products and technologies for other industries, including alcoholic beverages and bioethanol.
In our specialty ingredients portfolio, ABFI, we are using science and technology to create value-added, innovative specialty ingredients to serve the food and beverage, health and nutrition and pharmaceutical industries, as well as adjacent markets such as animal feed and certain industrial segments. Our strategic focus is on niche categories where we can have a differentiated proposition using platforms such as enzymes and other industrial biotechnology, precision extraction and synthetic chemistry. As well as building on these platforms, we are broadening our geographical exposure to certain developing markets.
We will continue to grow both through acquisitions and organically, including geographical expansion, innovation and new applications.
Our strategy is to drive sustainable long-term growth in Africa, building on our strong market positions, while delivering good returns in our European businesses over the cycle.
In our African markets, particularly Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania, growth in sugar consumption is expected to be driven by both population and economic growth. We have strong, attractive consumer brands and continue to build effective routes to market. We are investing to add production capacity in our larger growth markets such as Tanzania and Zambia. Across our markets, we will continue to expand our commercial capabilities, improve our operational effectiveness and strengthen our agricultural practices, which will help to increase cane yields. Over time, we have opportunities to expand our portfolio of co-products, such as potable alcohol and electricity. We are investing to deliver our ESG priorities, which include sustainable agricultural practices as well as social factors.
In Europe, our strategy is to deliver good profitability and cash generation through the cycle, and to that end, we review and restructure businesses in our portfolio when required. Our businesses focus on long-term customer relationships, built on the high quality of our products and the security of our supply. We also see opportunities to grow our portfolio of co-products, drive continuous operational efficiencies and to use data and technology to improve yields and profitability for our growers. We continue to invest in our ESG priorities, in particular our decarbonisation programme.
Our strategy is to build value-added agri-food businesses on the foundation of our experience in our commoditised feed business, growing organically and through acquisition.
We are expanding our portfolio of innovative, specialty feed ingredients, including feed enzymes and additive products, which we sell globally. We are also growing our integrated dairy business in the UK, connecting data, services and products in new ways, to provide insights to help our customers improve dairy farm performance. We continue to strengthen our position as a market leader in premix and compound animal feed in the UK and China.
We are enabled by our devolved operating model.
Our devolved operating model enables us to manage a large and diverse portfolio of businesses. We believe in setting objectives from the bottom up rather than the top down. Operational decisions are made locally, by the people closest to their customers and markets. Our model enables business leaders to be empowered and accountable, driving innovative thinking and quick decision-making.
The central leadership team fosters a clear sense of purpose, culture and values, that runs through our devolved model. Business leaders are encouraged to be long-term in their thinking and in their approach to investment and value creation.
There is continuous dialogue between the centre and the businesses to co-create strategy, assess operational execution and financial performance, and to review risks and opportunities. The centre takes a rigorous and disciplined approach to deploying capital to ensure investments deliver good returns over the long term.
As well as providing a hub of central support, the centre creates a framework for knowledge-sharing and a culture of collaboration across the Group. This enables us to accelerate change and innovation in response to changing market and consumer trends. The businesses also benefit from the capability and scale at the centre in areas such as IT, cyber security, procurement, treasury, tax and legal.
The central oversight of the business leaders and their teams focuses on the recruitment, retention and development of high-performing individuals, who are able to pursue exciting career opportunities across the Group.
