McColl’s Retail Group has announced an 8.1% increase in total revenue in the year ending 25 November 2018, but supply chain disruption was blamed for a drop in pre-tax profit to £7.9m.

Total like-for-like sales dropped 1.4%, but picked up towards the end of the year, increasing 1.2% in the first quarter of 2019. The rollout of 1,300 stores to Morrisons supply was achieved in less than nine months, 59 convenience store refreshes were completed in the year and 11 new stores acquired.

McColl’s Retail Group chief executive, Jonathan Miller, said: “2018 was undoubtedly a challenging year, marked by supply chain disruption following Palmer & Harvey’s entry into administration and the accelerated transition to our new supply partner Morrisons.

“Despite this disruption, we continued to make progress against a number of our key strategic plans.

“We are a profitable and cash generative business, and our priority for the year ahead is to rebuild operational momentum and we remain confident in delivering our strategic plans.”

Early trading in 2019 has seen a sales improvement with total like-for-like sales for the 11 week period ending 10 February 2019 up 1.2%, while total sales increased 0.4%.

The Group expects to acquire a small number of new convenience stores in 2019, and plans to complete 20-30 more convenience store refurbishments as part of McColl’s store refresh programme.