Primark, one of the UK’s leading high-street retail chains, has delivered a 5% rise in sales.

Primark, one of the UK’s leading high-street retail chains, has delivered a 5% like-for-like rise in sales for owner Associated British Foods (ABF) in the six months to 28 February 2009.

According to interim results published today (21 April), the Group’s revenue is up 18% to £4,374 million, and it has shown a profit before tax of £275 million, just 2% down from the previous half-year.

Primark did particularly well, with sales at the value fashion retailer growing 18% to £1.06 billion, and profits up 10% to £122m.

The sales increase reflects the increase in selling space to 5.6m sq ft – within a total of 187 stores. Since last year end ABF has opened three new stores in Spain at Oviedo, La Coruna and La Gavia (Madrid), bringing the number of stores in Spain to 12. The company also opened its first store in the Netherlands, and new stores in High Wycombe and Corby in the UK.

With a further seven stores expected in the second half of the year, retail selling space at the year end is forecast to be 5.9 million sq ft – and will lead to the creation of 2,300 new jobs.

ABF also stressed that margins in the second half will also see some effect from the weakness of sterling against the US dollar as many of Primark’s garments are sourced in dollars, although this will be mitigated in part by lower supplier prices and freight costs.

ABF, which also owns Silver Spoon sugar, Twinings Tea and Kingsmill bread, said the strong performance of Primark offset continuing weakness in its grocery business, specifically in the US - operating profits at ABF’s grocery division fell to £62m from £88m.

George Weston, Chief Executive of ABF, said: “This is a reassuring set of results achieved in a difficult economic environment.  Strong profit growth was delivered by Sugar and Primark but Grocery was adversely affected by high priced contracts in US corn oil. Good progress was made with the capital investment programme which will be a major contributor to our future growth.”