Associated British Foods’ make-up — half sugar and food ingredients, half low-price clothes retailer — makes little sense. As I have suggested before, it is unlikely it would be created that way today from scratch. The latest trading update, though, suggests it brings with it some advantages.
The focus in recent years has been on the extraordinary growth of Primark, while the food parts, particularly sugar, have been undermined by several unrelated factors. The update for the final 16 weeks of last year suggests some reversal of this. Primark was hit by the weather. The first half of the period was strong by comparison with the same period last year, when the weather was mild.
The second half suffered from the warm weather in the