HMS, the parent company of several ingredient businesses, has revealed a new identity and name – The Albex Group.
The firm is a major player in the Scottish food supply chain and owns cheese packing specialist Tom Walker & Sons.
Beginning with Kent Foods in 1986, The Albex Group is now home to ten companies involved in the supply of ingredients and related services to food and beverage manufacturers. Other members of the group include Henley Bridge Ingredients (a specialist distributor of chocolate, ice cream and culinary ingredients) and Kent Foods Manufacturing (a specialist in ingredient blending and packing).
The Albex Group employs 300 staff, operates from ten sites across Europe, and owns more than 250,000 square feet of warehousing space. In 2022 the business reported sales of £302 million.
Chairman and founder Iain Dalglish said, “Over the past three decades we’ve been focused on building a company which provides a valuable service to both sides of the ingredients supply chain. We offer ingredient manufacturers a ready-made, cost-effective route to every market for their goods and we offer users of those ingredients unrivalled choice, availability, service and value.
“HMS was always intended as a temporary name, but we got so caught up building the business that it has taken us a while to get round to changing it to something more meaningful. Albex is far better suited to who we are. Based on the Gaelic word for Scotland, Alba, it reflects our Scottish roots. At the same time, it speaks to our quest for excellence in everything we do.
“Central to our approach with Albex is that we are a family of companies. Each company in the group has its own identity, its own management team and its own way of doing things. They operate independently and we have no intention of changing that. The role of Albex is to support them strategically and to provide shared services such as IT, warehousing and transport where we’re more efficient and effective working together as one.”
