Scotland’s fastest-growing companies named

11 Scottish companies feature on this weekend’s 16th annual Sunday Times BDO Profit Track 100.

The league table ranks Britain’s private companies with the fastest-growing profits over the last three years.

The 11 firms have achieved combined profits of £239million and employ 21,900 staff – having added 9,600 jobs in the last three years.

Scotland’s highest ranked company is Edinburgh-based travel search engine Skyscanner, which features in the top 3 in Britain. The group has offices in Beijing, Miami, Singapore, Sofia and Glasgow. Last year it acquired Chinese metasearch company Youbibi and Hungarian mobile app development company Distinction, both for undisclosed sums. Each month 25 million people in 42 countries use its website and app to book airline tickets, and profits rose an average of 140% a year to £18million in 2013.

One long-established brand on the league table that features for the third consecutive year is Glasgow-based Tunnock’s, which is known for its caramel wafers and tea cakes. The family-owned company started life in 1890 in a bakers’ shop, and is led by 81-year-old Boyd Tunnock the founder’s grandson. Profits rose an average of 78% a year to £6.2m in 2014.

The Profit Track 100 is sponsored by BDO, Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking and UBS Wealth Management. It is compiled by Fast Track, the Oxford-based research and networking events firm.

Martin Gill, partner and head of Scotland at BDO, the title sponsor of the league table, said: “Medium-sized businesses in Scotland and across the UK are thriving. Our newly-named ‘Brittelstand’ has outgrown the German ‘Mittelstand’ with mid-market businesses across all sectors seizing the opportunities a growing economy presents.

“Scotland’s most profitable companies have remained focused on sustainable growth by making intelligent investment decisions in innovation and overseas expansion.”