Coral puts brave face on profits dip

Merseyside-based moulded plastic goods Coral Products specialist products is putting a brave face on a big reduction in pre-tax profits.

The listed Haydock company is attributing the fall in profit from £758,000 in the year to April 2016 to this year’s figure of £465,000 to the poor performance of Coral Products Mouldings.

This also led to reduced underlying profit of £1.1m from £1.6m in 2016.

However, turnover climbed 14.5% to £21.4m from £18.7m in the prior year.

Chairman Joe Grimmond said: “We continue to invest in our group adding new and improved capacity. This creating greater sales opportunities and we anticipate significant sales growth over the current financial year.

“The group continues with its strategic progress of increasing focus on value-added and innovative products, particularly in the food container, recycling, telecommunications, rail industry and automotive markets.

“We successfully introduced more than 90 new automotive components in March and April.

“Our aim continues to be to build a significant plastic moulding business and we remain confident in our ability to make further progress by improving business performance and increasing our market share to drive forward financial results over the medium term.”