Kerry Group’s directors took home pay worth more than €6 million last year, according to the annual report.

Chief executive Stan McCarthy earned €1.8 million in 2011, but saw his pay increase to €2.02 million last year.

His pay package was made up of €979,000 basic salary, €263,000 in pension contributions, €65,000 benefits-in-kind and a performance-related bonus of €722,000. His performance-related bonus was up by nearly 5 per cent on the 2011 figure of €689,000.

His deputy – chief financial officer Brian Mehigan – took home €980,000 last year, including a performance related bonus of €327,000. His overall remuneration package was €958,000 in 2011.

Flor Healy, chief executive of Kerry Foods, got €958,000 for the year, up from €750,000 in 2011.

The fourth-top executive at Kerry Group is Gerry Behan, head of the group's US ingredients and flavours division, which accounts for a substantial part of total group sales and earnings. He took home €1.3 million in 2012. His remuneration package, up from the 2011 figure of €1.08 million, included a basic salary of €605,000 and pension contributions of €170,000.

The four directors will see an average increase of 2.2 per cent in their 2013 basic pay. Last year the directors basic pay was increased by 1.5 per cent on average in deference to inflation.

Chairman Denis Buckley was the best-paid non-executive director at the company last year, receiving total payments of €209,000, unchanged since 2011.

The food ingredients company achieved string growth last year, increases in size by more than 2.3 times from a value of €3.5 billion in 2008 to €8.2 billion at the end of December 2012.

The company increased sales revenue by 10.3 per cent to €5.8 billion last year, while trading profits climbed 10.8 per cent to €555 million.