McBride fights off currency pressures with £36.4m profits

McBride, the manufacturer of personal care, skincare and toiletry products for retailers, has successfully fought currency pressures with adjusted pre-tax profits up by nearly 18% to £36.4m.

Year-end results to June 30 show the Middleton, Greater Manchester company’s revenue grew by almost 4% to £705m as the company continued its “repair, prepare and grow” strategy.

The company said the turnaround in business of its PCA Asia business was progressing although “conditions for PCA Europe remain challenging”.

McBride, which also has manufacturing sites in Manchester, Barrow, Hull and Bradford but which carries out 70% of its activities in subsidiaries outside the UK, also highlighted the proposed acquisition of Danish producer of auto dish-wash and laundry products Danland.

Meanwhile, group refinancing was completed successfully in June, the “last key repair action” and the debt was reduced from £91m in 2016 to £75.7m.

Chief executive Rik De Vos said: “”We are pleased to have delivered another year of improved financial performance in line with our strategy. Whilst revenues have been under pressure in a number of territories, strong margin management and cost control have delivered increased earnings.

“We have successfully completed the first phase of our three-phase strategy of ‘repair, prepare, grow’ to restore McBride to its core capability of manufacturing excellence.

“The ‘prepare’ phase is on track and we have now finalised the growth strategy and associated capital expenditure plans to support the ‘grow’ phase.

“Trading in the first few months of the new financial year has been satisfactory and in line with the board’s expectations for the full year.

“We are maintaining our focus on cost and efficiency initiatives to mitigate the impact of any current pressures on revenue.

“We anticipate financial performance weighted towards the second half of the year as increases in revenues from our ‘grow’ strategy begin to benefit the business.”