BANBRIDGE-headquartered seed and grain firm Germinal Holdings grew both sales and turnover last year - despite its staff numbers declining by almost a fifth.
The family business, founded in Belfast in 1825, had revenues of £27.6 million in the year to last June, lifting from £26.2 million a year earlier.
And its bottom-line profits soared from just over £3 million to £5.2 million, helped by a £1.7m gain on the revaluation of an investment property.
Shareholders’ funds ended the year at £38.4 million (nearly £5m up on 2018), with a dividend of £215,261 being paid to investors, who include members of the Gilbert and McCausland families, descendants of its founder Samuel McCausland.
That came as Germinal's payroll fell back from 99 employees to 81, with the cuts coming mainly in production, distribution and sales staff.
Despite that, its overall wages bill rose from £4.4m to £5.3m, principally due its pension costs more than doubling.
Germinal, which supplies high-grade grass seeds, fertilisers and wild flowers for use in agriculture and sports arenas, has expanded internationally in recent years.
However, it recently closed - and subsequently razed to the ground - its Coburn's fishing, shooting and lifestyle shop in Banbridge, due to what it said was "sustained competition from online retailers and the shift in consumer spending away from the high street".
Germinal counts itself as the largest family-owned amenity seed firm in Britain or Ireland, and is managed by William Gilbert, a direct descendant of the original owners.
The company expanded into England in the 1950s, and in the 1960s it merged with Banbridge-based Joseph Morton Ltd and later acquired James Coburn & Sons also in the town.
Over recent decades Germinal expanded operations throughout Britain, and in 2002 took a shareholding in New Zealand company Cates Grain and Seed.
In 2013 it brought its Samuel McCausland and British Seeds Houses names under the one Germinal Seeds brands.
Today, grass and clover varieties developed by Germinal are distributed worldwide in Europe, North and South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
Grass is regarded as being more valuable than ever to Northern Ireland farmers, where the grass crop is more than four times the farm gate value of wheat, barley, oats, mushrooms and potatoes combined.
