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Insider UK

Peter A Walker

Scotland's top 100 companies revealed

Scotland Grant Thornton

Scotland's top 100 private limited companies have been revealed.

The latest list from professional services firm Grant Thornton shows that food and drink companies dominate, with the majority based in the west of the country – a region that is home to nearly half (47) of the companies.

The dominance of energy and natural resources and manufacturing and engineering in the north east of Scotland comes as no surprise, but it’s not a market that stands still – especially with the changing offshore landscape.

Following a trend seen in previous reports, the north and south have the lowest number of top 100 companies.

This year saw several large companies leave the table, including businesses that were sold to foreign or listed buyers. These include Siccar Point (acquired by Ithaca); Sparrows Offshore Group (acquired by Altrad); JohnLawrie Group (acquired by Arcelormittal); Braid Group (acquired by Hillebrand); NationalTyres (acquired by Halfords); and BSWTimber (acquired by Binderholz).

Elsewhere, businesses that were significantly impacted by Covid-19, such as Edinburgh Airport, Caledonian Heritable and Apex Hotels also left the list.

New entrants include Aggreko, the engineering business which was taken private in August 2021, and Arjowiggins – although the latter just filed for administration.

Recent strong growth has seen the Cameron Group, Scottish Woodlands and Grahams Dairy moving into the top 100 for the first time.

The Scotland Limited Report is compiled using the most recent publicly available accounts of Scotland’s best performing businesses, which are ranked based on a hybrid measure of data, which includes turnover and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.

Reflecting a UK-wide trend of post-pandemic deal-making seen since the second half of 2020, 20% of Scotland’s Top 100 were active on the mergers and acquisitions front.

By far the most active sectors were food and drink, manufacturing and engineering, and energy and natural resources, accounting for 20 transactions - 74% out of the total 27 deals completed during the review period.

Again mirroring wider market trends, there’s an increased proliferation of private-equity backed businesses in the list, with 21 leading privately-owned businesses having equity backing - up by four on the last report.

More than 42% of the private equity backed companies come from the manufacturing and engineering, and energy and natural resources sectors. Although the food and drink sector accounts for 22 of the top 100, only two are private equity-backed, reflecting the number of family-owned groups operating in this sector.

Neil McInnes, partner and head of corporate finance for Grant Thornton in Scotland, said: “Despite the more recent setbacks from multiple challenges posed by geo-political factors and global issues, the evolving story since Scotland Limited first launched in 2014 is still one of growth.

“While inflation, supply-chain disruption and rising interest rates continue to test the navigation skills of management teams across Scottish business, it’s especially instructive to look at the private companies which have already demonstrated how to ride out the turbulence.”