Chicken Joes, which trades as Love Joes secured a tax benefit worth £77,863 with the help of R&D tax consultancy Catax. The cash went towards developing a new cooking and coating factory, improvements to the way coatings adhere to its products and the development of ways to filter cooking oil more effectively.
Commenting on the credit, Koumi said: “It’s fantastic to know that we can rely on these incentives. We could have sat back as a company but it’s just not in our DNA.
“We have always strived to continue to improve the products, not just the way they taste but the way they are produced so they are as consistent in quality as they could possibly be.
‘Next set of improvements’
“Our reputation rests on the ability to do this, so adapting machinery and always returning to see what we can do better comes naturally after all these years. We’ve already reinvested these tax credits into our next set of improvements, so it’s a virtuous circle that really strengthens the business.”
R&D tax credits were introduced by the government in 2000 to incentivise innovation and result in either a reduction in a limited company’s corporation tax bill or a cash lump sum.
According to Catax, many firms are unaware that the work they do qualifies as R&D and are missing out on the benefits these tax credits can bring. What’s more, R&D work do not need to have been successful to qualify and claims can be made up to two years beyond the end of the tax year in which the work took place.
‘Rightly rewarded’
Kully Nijjar, associate director at Catax, added: “Joe and his team really have taken the fight to the market by striving to improve all the time in a very competitive industry, and they have been rightly rewarded with a significant tax benefit.
“They haven’t stopped evolving and innovating over the past 27 years and the company is a perfect example of how R&D tax credits can make a massive difference to businesses in any sector. There’s always R&D lurking somewhere.”
Meanwhile, salmon processor Harbourside Products clawed back £164,836 in tax to help support research and development (R&D).