The East of England has increased its presence in a yearly league table of mid-market growth companies.

The 10th annual Sunday Times Grant Thornton Top Track 250 league table, which ranks Britain’s leading private mid-market growth companies with the biggest sales, includes 14 firms which have their headquarters in the East of England, compared to nine last year.

All the companies increased sales or profits by at least 10% year-on-year, achieving combined sales of £3.9billion and employing more than 19,500 people.

There are eight entrants that were not on the league table last year, including Norwich-based home products supplier Anglian Group and Cambridge-based cleaning products maker Jeyes, which has a major factory in Thetford. They are joined by G’s, the Ely-based salad and vegetable grower, which has facilities in Spain, the Czech Republic, Senegal and Poland. Under chief executive John Shropshire, 59, sales reached £380m in 2013.

Also featured is Top 100 firm Midwich, an audio-visual products distributor based at Diss, which is ranked 115th, Norwich-based building contractor R G Carter, which is 101st, and Anglian Group, also at Norwich, which is ranked 119.

The Grant Thornton Top Track 250 league table and awards programme is sponsored by Grant Thornton and Barclays, and compiled by Fast Track, the Oxford-based research and networking events company.

Malcolm Gomersall, Central and East regional managing partner at Grant Thornton UK LLP, the title sponsor of the league table, praised the companies for their performance.

“These mid-sized businesses are such an integral part of the UK economy. They continue to thrive and grow, often on an international stage and their achievements are rightly celebrated here in the Top Track 250,” he said.

“We listen carefully to them about the barriers, challenges and opportunities that they see and, through our ‘Agents of growth’ campaign, champion policy changes that will help. We think this dynamic segment of the market is starting to find a voice and is being heard.”

The Grant Thornton Top Track 250 complements the Top Track 100, which features Britain’s biggest private companies and was published in June. It ranks the next 250-biggest companies by sales, provided either sales or profits have increased by at least 10% year-on-year. The 250 companies generated total combined sales of £70bn, operating profits of £4.4bn and employed a total of 412,000 staff.

The Top Track 250 companies are predominantly based in London (54) and the southeast (40). The remainder are headquartered in Yorkshire and Northeast (33), the Midlands (30), Northwest (27), Scotland (26), East (14), Southwest (13), Northern Ireland (8) and Wales (5).

Firms from the East that featured over the years include Peterborough-based vegetable supplier Produce World (featured 2009-2010), and Ipswich animal feed manufacturer BOCM Pauls (featured 2007-2011), which was acquired by Dutch firm ForFarmers in a £65million deal in 2012, and still has its UK headquarters in the town.