ICE cream maker Richmond has announced that business has exceeded even its most optimistic forecasts.

The North Yorkshire company is hoping to overtake Wall's as the nation's favourite purveyor of ices.

Richmond, which has a factory in Northallerton, said sales had picked up strongly in the second quarter, when the firm increased its share of the take-home ice cream sector.

The sales boost helped the company cut its pre-tax losses for the six months to March 30 to £199,000, from £720,000 in the first half of last year. But turnover slipped 0.6 per cent to £42.2m.

Much of the take-home sales came through supermarkets which have helped Richmond move towards profitability in the winter season, a traditionally tough time for the industry.

Supermarkets represent Richmond's biggest and best-performing clients and the company has increased its market share of take-home sales in the second quarter to 25.6 per cent from 23.3 per cent in the same period last year.

Richmond is also attacking the soft ice cream market through its Nestle Ice Creamery products, which it believes will help increase impulse buying by consumers.

The system was acquired last year when Richmond bought Nestle's UK ice cream business and was recently re-launched under the Nestle brand.

As part of the deal, Richmond snapped up a clutch of brands, including ice cream versions of Rolo, Smarties and Kit Kat.

The company said its second half would benefit from sales and market share gains from new branded and own-label products, a strong promotional strategy and higher service levels.

Chairman Ross Warburton said the challenge now facing Richmond after successfully integrating the Nestle brands was to drive profitable organic growth.

He said: "Our drive for growth in the second half of the year is to maintain market leadership in bulk ice cream and ice lollies while increasing sales in the luxury ice cream and individual portion ice cream sectors of the take-home market, where we have a growing share."

Richmond is undertaking a £25m investment programme over three years to boost operating efficiencies at its plants at Leeming Bar, Northallerton, and Cross Gates, Leeds.

For the full year City analysts are forecasting pre-tax profits of about £10m. Shares rose 5p to 370p on the news.

Shareholders will receive an interim dividend of p, unchanged from last year.