TOP: ISTOCK; FREYBE GOURMET FOODS JULY/AUGUST 2019 BCBUSINESS 73
Masbate Mine in the Philippines achieved
record annual production.
Premium Brands Holdings Corp.
REVENUE CHANGE: 37.6%
NET INCOME: $98 million
NET INCOME CHANGE: 21.7%
Nearly 10 years ago, food manufactur-
ing and distribution specialist Premium
Brands Holdings acquired
SK Food Group, which
supplies Starbucks with
its breakfast sandwiches
and wraps. As a result,
the Richmond-based
out‚t enjoyed massive
growth. In 2018,
publicly traded
Premium Brands,
which owns names
like Freybe Gourmet
Foods and Grimm's Fine
Foods, again set its sights
on gobbling up other busi-
nesses, acquiring 12. Those
purchases cost $753 million,
but the company estimates
that, prorated over the year,
they would have brought
in $960 million. At one point in 2018, its
stock price reached a ‚ve-year high.
Super Save Group
REVENUE CHANGE: 33.9%
NET INCOME: NP
NET INCOME CHANGE: NA
Mobster movies have taught us to raise an
eyebrow when a waste management opera-
tion gets a huge in'ux of revenue, but Super
Save Group came by the increase
honestly. The privately held
Surrey-based company's good
fortune appears to be tied to the
province-wide construction boom.
After all, the business also rents out
portable toilets, garbage bins and
fences. Oh, and high gas prices prob-
ably didn't hurt Super Save's
propane sales, either.
Polygon Family of
Companies
REVENUE CHANGE: –43.9%
NET INCOME: NA
NET INCOME CHANGE: NA
For last year's top revenue
gainer on our list (with a
whopping 138-percent increase), some-
thing had to give. Though the Vancouver-
based real estate developer is privately
owned, it seems obvious that govern-
ment e˜orts to curb housing prices have
taken hold. The third-biggest revenue
loser, down 41.8 percent, fellow property
developer the BC Housing Management
Commission, su˜ered a similar fate—it was
the No. 2 gainer last year.
WorkSafeBC
REVENUE CHANGE: –39.5%
NET INCOME: $16 million
NET INCOME CHANGE: –98.9%
Before it took over government in 2017, the
NDP spent years railing against the way
Christy Clark's BC Liberal administration
treated WorkSafeBC (see p.85). It's not
clear if the workplace insurer has made
any radical changes since the provincial
election, but in ‚scal 2018 the agency
su˜ered a revenue dive linked to invest-
ment income. Markets delivered a modest
2.1-percent increase for WorkSafeBC,
which is solely funded by employer pre-
miums and returns from those premiums.
By contrast, investment income grew 10.5
percent for the 2017 ‚scal year.
SAFETY FIRST
WorkSafeBC was long the subject of
NDP gripes against the former Liberal
government, but it's unclear how
much has changed since the switch
