Retail trio make Sunday Times Top 250

The 2012 Sunday Times Grant Thornton Top Track 250, which charts the successes of mid-market private companies throughout Britain, has been unveiled and includes three Lancashire-based companies.

The highest ranked is Preston’s James Hall & Co which placed 37th with sales of £444.1m. The company, which employs more than 2,000, is the Spar distributor for the north of England. It distributes fresh, frozen and ambient goods to 450 stores.

Blackburn’s Euro Garages, owned and operated by the Issa family, ranked 106th with sales of £305m. The forecourt operators now have more than 70 sites throughout the north of England and the midlands.

Booths Supermarket ranked 127th on the list, registering sales in excess of £273m. Established as a solitary shop in Blackpool more than 160 years ago, Booths is still a family-owned firm. Edwin Booth, who shares his name with the company’s founder, now oversees 28 food, wine and grocery store.

Each company, by featuring in the Top Track 250, now ranks alongside alongside national household names such as Aston Martin, Nando’s, Pret a Manger, Lush, Selfridges and Yeo Valley.

The league table complements the Sunday Times Top Track 100 league table of Britain’s private companies with the biggest sales, listing the next 250 biggest companies, provided they have either reported an increase in sales or in operating profits in their latest accounts.

Overall, the 250 companies generated combined sales of £77bn and employed 494,000 staff – equivalent to roughly 5% of GDP and 1.7% of the UK workforce.