Newport-headquartered, leading UK recruitment and training company Acorn has reported its best year since it was formed nearly 21 years ago – earning a record £102m in 2013.

Acorn’s earnings also played a significant role in boosting parent company Synergie’s revenue for 2013 to record levels, which returned sales for the year of almost €1.52bn – an increase of 4.9 per cent.

It’s the third record year by Acorn during the last four years – and the first time the group has topped £100m; an increase of around 14 per cent on 2012 revenues.

Acorn’s rising revenues were boosted by an increase in temporary recruitment and, more significantly, permanent recruitment activity – which saw a rise of 33 per cent on the previous year.

Acorn’s Training arm also enjoyed a record year, delivering apprenticeship programmes right across its portfolio of clients and providing opportunities for younger job-seekers, in particular, as well as launching a unique degree course in leadership and management development in conjunction with Cardiff Metropolitan University.

Matt Southall, group managing director of Acorn, which has 35 offices across the UK and three in Australia, said: “The team at Acorn has worked its socks off over the last five years and the 2013 performance demonstrates that for job-seekers throughout the UK and internationally, Acorn is increasingly their agency of choice when looking for work.

“This was further evidenced when Acorn was recently voted by job-seekers UK-wide as one of the top ten recruitment agencies out of 9,500 agencies in the country; which is great news for employers, of course, ensuring that they can rely on Acorn to help find the quantity and quality of candidates from which they look to build their future workforce.

“This year is already continuing in the same vein - we are already placing 25 per cent more people into work each week than we did during the same period last year.

“It is well recognised that recruitment companies of the size and breadth of Acorn are an important bellwether for the health of the economy and our experience over the last year or so supports the view that confidence has not only returned to many regions and sectors across the UK, but it is continuing to grow.”

Acorn, which has its headquarters on the Celtic Springs Business Park in Newport, places around 6,500 people into the workplace with around 850 different client companies every week.