2023: What a year at Around Noon

As we say goodbye to 2023 and get ready to welcome 2024, it’s a fitting time to reflect on and to pay tribute to all of the people who have contributed to an amazing 12 months at Around Noon.

We are extremely proud of all we have achieved in 2023 and wanted to highlight the hard work and dedication of our team in particular by sharing some of our best bits from 2023.

Welcoming the Soho Sandwich Company

This year we acquired the London-based Soho Sandwich Company. This is an amazing opportunity for the whole team. It almost doubled annual turnover to ￡80 million. It also enabled us to add another production facility in the south of England and welcome 200 people to our team. We’re delighted with this opportunity as we’re so aligned with Soho Sandwich Company in terms of values, core purpose and the overall business. We're really excited for this partnership in the year ahead!

Expanding Slough

Our ongoing organic growth means we need additional space, so this year we announced plans to open a new factory in Slough. We have grown our run rate in Slough from ￡4m per year to around ￡30m per year and now manufacture over 400,000 products per week, so we’re really pleased to have another factory to continue our growth.? Well done everyone involved!

Growing The Team?

This year we welcomed lots of new team members to Around Noon. We had new people joining across the business to support our growth. We also welcomed new people into management positions, including a new quality manager and an NPD manager, a new Technical & Innovation Director and a Head of Human Resources, as well as new members of the Board of Directors. It’s been a pleasure to expand our team with such talented and dedicated people and we're looking forward to working with you all in 2024.

Winning new customers?

This year has been a great one for customer growth at Around Noon. In 2023, we secured some fantastic new customers in retail, convenience, coffee and travel. We also experienced high growth within existing customers. We are so proud of the whole team and look forward to taking great care of all of our customers, new and long-standing, during 2024 and beyond.

Fast Growth Business of the Year Award?

As fitting recognition of our team’s hard work this year, we recently won Fast Growth Business of the Year Award at the Business Eye Awards. We were also shortlisted for Company of the Year and Manufacturer of the Year. Many of Northern Ireland’s very best companies were shortlisted, so we were pleased to be among them. We are thrilled for our entire team across our sites. It was a great way to finish off a fantastic year and we are so proud to have won.

Supporting Mary’s Meals?

Something we are very proud of is our team’s dedication to supporting initiatives in the community. Our chosen charity for 2023 was Mary’s Meals. Mary’s Meals is an amazing charity, currently feeding over 2 million children every school day across 18 countries. This year we have enjoyed fundraising with a number of fun events and initiatives both in the office and in the community, including street collections, bingo nights and getting creative with Halloween themed apple decorating. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed putting our efforts into fundraising for this very deserving charity this year and we hope our donation will make a huge difference for many children.

Looking forward to the year ahead?

2023 was an unbelievable year for us and we want to extend a huge thank you to everyone who has supported us, including our team, suppliers, partners and customers. Here’s to an even better 2024!