Buccaneer remains in profit despite energy costs

Published by

Peter Davison

The Green Dragon in the Cotswolds village of Cowley

South West pub group Buccaneer has reported that its business remains profitable, despite energy costs.

The Cheltenham-headquartered group runs nine managed pubs in Bristol, Devon, Dorset, Hereford, and Somerset reported turnover increased to £9,633,565 for the year ending 1 November 2022 compared with £5,818,345 the year before.

Revenue was also up on the £8,855,227 reported for the year ending 1 November 2019 – the last full year before the pandemic.

Pre-tax profit was down to £290,496 from £374,781 the previous year (2019: £196,203).

A dividend of £6,334 was paid (2021: £6,334).

The company was founded in 1974 by Michael Ruthven and remains in family ownership. In 1990 most of Buccaneer's 34 pubs were sold to Whitbread, with Mr Ruthven retaining two pubs.

The group has ambitions to enlarge its operation to 15 pubs.

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.