Channel firms toast Top Track triumph

SCC and Westcoast among those featured on Sunday Times list of the biggest-selling UK privately owned firms

The channel was well represented in the Sunday Times' most recent supplement ranking the UK's top 100 privately held firms with the biggest sales.

The recently published Top Track 100 list ranks the firms with the biggest revenue – which usually ranges between £700m and £2.5bn. About 45 per cent are owned by private equity and they typically employ between 500 and 20,000 staff.

SCC owner the Rigby Group came in 13th place on the list, posting sales of £2.8bn and profits of £48m in its fiscal 2012, which ended in March 2012.

Total profits for the Rigby Group are expected to fall this year following the £213m sale of distribution arm SDG to Tech Data last year. Sir Peter Rigby and his family are the main shareholders in the firm, which also owns the Eden Hotel Collection and Coventry Airport.

In 52nd place was Westcoast, which racked up sales of £1bn and profits of £11m in 2012. It is owned entirely by Joe Hemani and employs more than 800 staff.

The distributor was among 10 firms which broke the £1bn sales barrier for the first time, along with Phones4U and vacuum cleaner maker Dyson.

This year, the Top Track 100 companies have combined sales of £195bn – equivalent to 13 per cent of UK GDP.

The Sunday Times publishes a range of business-focused lists throughout the year, including September's Tech Track, and a list of firms with the fastest-growing profits, which was released in April and featured Pheonix Software and UKFast.