Two Scottish companies feature in this years Sunday Times Virgin Atlantic Fast Track 100 league table which ranks Britain’s private companies with the fastest-growing sales.
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Featuring for a record seventh consecutive year is BrewDog, the brewer and bar operator and is ranked No 71 nationally. The Aberdeenshire firm has opened nearly 60 bars in locations as far afield as Brazil and Japan, and is Scotland’s largest independent brewery.
It has grown its sales over the past three years by an average of 56% a year, to £111.6m in 2017, when it was valued at £1bn after selling a stake to TSG Consumer Partners. At its shareholder meeting in April, it told shareholders that it was planning a stock market flotation as soon as 2020.
The new entrant and country’s top-ranked company is Edinburgh-based Vaporized, which operates 112 vaping shops across Britain – making it the country’s largest vaping store chain. It has grown its sales over the past three years by an average of 97% a year, reaching £22.7m last year. In October, it announced plans to open another 200 stores by 2021.
The companies in Scotland appear with businesses from around Britain, including burger restaurant chain Five Guys, beauty products retailer Charlotte Tilbury Beauty, and football club AFC Bournemouth. Past stars include chip designer ARM, which featured in 1997 with sales of £17m, floated and was acquired by Japan’s SoftBank in 2016 for £24bn; and mixer drinks maker Fever-Tree, which floated in 2014 at £154m and is now worth £2.6bn.
The Fast Track 100 is sponsored by Virgin Atlantic, Barclays, BDO, BGF and N+1 Singer, and is compiled by Fast Track, the Oxford-based research and networking events firm.
Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Group, which has supported Fast Track 100 for all 22 years, commented:
“Entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of UK business and have always been the beating heart of positive change. In a climate of uncertainty, it’s more important than ever to recognise those entrepreneurs, like those of this year’s Fast Track 100, who are making the world a better place for everybody.”
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