Ringtons tea to target retirement town on South coast

Jan 15 2010 by Iain Laing, The Journal

TRADITIONAL North East tea brand Ringtons is to take its unique offering to the popular retirement towns of the South coast after a recession-busting year which saw sales and profits soar.

This success has prompted the Newcastle-based company to invest £3m in a new fleet of vans from fellow family-run regional business Benfield Motors.

Established 102 years ago Ringtons vans and door-to-door salesmen are common sight on the streets of the North East. And the well-established service is now set the be rolled out across the retirement belt of England’s South coast.

New figures released by the company to The Journal show revenues for the year ending June 2009 rose to £32m from £30.5m in the previous year, with pre-tax profits climbing from £2m to £2.6m.

Managing director Simon Smith, grandson of the company founder Samuel Smith, said: “Bearing in the mind the state of the economy in the last year these are extremely good results. We had a record year.

“Our customers have remained very loyal and they seem to like the personal service that we offer. We have endeavoured to improve the value of our customer offering and keep our prices low.

“We aim to build up our customer relationship by ensuring the same person will visit the same customer every time.

“The customer decides to spend their money on the individual personality who comes to visit them.”