posting its results for the year to January 2015 on Thursday, the Cooperative Group’s Chief Executive Richard Pennycook said that a return to profit, and reduction of the group’s debt were for the most part due to sales of its branch of pharmacies and farming businesses.

Cooperative Farms, which had a history stretching back over 100 years, were sold last August to the Wellcome Trust for just under £250m. The Cooperative Group had refused offers for community buyouts for individual farms, opting instead to sell all 15 farms at once, in order to reduce its debt.

The Cooperative’s food business performed reasonably well in 2014, with its food convenience business experiencing healthy growth. The group recorded profits before member payments of £124m (compared to a loss of £255m in 2013), and welcomed a net profit of £216m - largely resulting from the disposal of Pharmacy and Farms businesses - compared a loss of £2.3bn over the previous year.

Richard Pennycook said the results showed that the second stage of the Cooperative’s three-phase turnaround is now underway. Pennycook said, “A significant element of our 2014 profit relates to one-off disposal gains on the sale of our Farms and Pharmacy businesses and property disposals. Without these we would, at best, have broken even.

“Against that backdrop, and given the need to invest in all our businesses, the Board will not be recommending a dividend to members and believes that a resumption of dividend payments is unlikely until the Rebuild phase is complete and we have returned to sustainable profitable growth.”