The Glasgow-headquartered company reported a turnover of £169.1m across its divisions for the year ended 31 December 2015, up from £153.8m in 2014.

The firm said full year trading was boosted by its acquisitions of One Packaging in August 2015 and the full year contribution from Lane Packaging, acquired in May 2014, and Network Packaging, bought in a £7.5m deal in September 2014.

The group’s operating profit was £7.7m, up 17% from £6.6m in 2014, while its pre-tax profit rose by 21%, from £5.6m in 2014 to £6.8m this year, marking its sixth consecutive year of profit growth.

The major driver for growth has been the group’s packaging and distribution arm, which represents the majority of the company’s trade, where revenue increased by 13%, from £126.9m in 2014 to £143m this year. As well as the acquisitions, the group said this was boosted by organic growth of 6%.

The company’s manufacturing operations revenue fell by 3% from £26.9m in 2014 to £26.1m this year.

This was attributed to management actions to rebalance the mix of products in the firm’s labels business - by shifting its main focus from self-adhesive to resealable labels - and the impact of exchange rates and weaker demand, particularly in export markets.

Macfarlane Group finance director John Love said: “We’ve been doing quite a lot of work in relation to sales pipeline activity to make sure we’re generating new customers. We’re not losing customers within manufacturing, but need to win a few more in case that export decline continues.”

However, the division increased operating profit by £100,000 to £1m this year, which the group attributed to the benefits of a better-balanced product portfolio and improvements in operational efficiency.

Macfarlane Group chief executive Peter Atkinson said: “2015 has been a very strong year for us but this is a continuation of a period of good growth for the business.

“The performance is built around two strong areas; the recommencing of our acquisition programme and the growth in internet retail. More is being bought over the web and it requires more protective packaging and we’ve positioned ourselves to take advantage of that.”

He added: “In terms of the continuation of that, we as shoppers seem to be focused on continuing to buy over the web, so we see internet retail growth to be a good area to continue our focus on. We’ve also got more acquisitions planned and would be disappointed if we don’t make at least two more in 2016.”

Atkinson said the firm has made positive growth with a number of both new and existing clients in the retail internet space during 2015.

“We’ve made extremely good growth with Home Retail Group, Selfridges is a similar story and Boots.com became a new client to us recently,” he said.

“We’ve also seen continuing growth from The Hut and Lakeland as well as growth from Thermo Fisher and Schneider in the industrial packaging marketplace.”

Net debt in the period increased from £10.1m to £11.6m, as a consequence of the acquisition undertaken during 2015.

The group’s existing bank facilities with Lloyds Banking Group have been extended until June 2019 and increased to £25m, which the firm said would accommodate normal working capital requirements and support acquisition funding. A further option is available to increase the facility to £30m in the period to June 2019.

The company’s pension deficit was £11.5m, a reduction of £2.4m from the 2014 figure of £13.9m.

The 750-staff firm has proposed to pay a final dividend of 1.29p per share, making a full year dividend of 1.82p per share, a 10% increase on the prior year’s dividend of 1.65p per share.

The group’s share price fell by 5.5% to 58.25p yesterday following the results announcement.