Liverpool’s £45m exhibition hall could ‘break ground in 18 months’

WORK could start on a new exhibition hall on Kings Dock in Liverpool as soon as next August, according to the boss of ACC Liverpool, which is leading development proposals.

The £45m facility, linked to the existing Area and Convention Centre, will include three exhibition halls that will each be 2,700 sq m.

A feasibility study has completed and ACC Liverpool is now preparing to put detailed proposals and funding options to the council in the next quarter.

Bob Prattey, chief executive of ACC, told TheBusinessDesk he is hopeful that “with a fair wind” work could start on site 18 months from now.

“The exhibition hall will be the next big step change for the business,” he said.

“It is compatible with the existing business and means we can stage bigger conferences that require more space. It also gives opportunities to move into stand alone exhibitions in the trade business sector.”

It will be operated using the same model as the arena and convention centre, where Liverpool City Council owns the building and operations are run by ACC Liverpool as a council owned subsidiary.

Mr Prattey added that while the development of the exhibition hall was taking up considerable time and energy, management were also concentrating efforts on reducing the cost base of the existing business, after almost two full years of operations.

“We are looking at how we deliver the business and how we can be smarter to deliver at less cost,” he said.

The news came as newly filed accounts show the company failed to turn a profit in its first full year of operation – previously unaudited figures showed the company had made a small profit of £16,000.

It made a pre-tax loss of £106,000 for the year to the end of March 2009, on a turnover of £12.25m.

Mr Prattey said the discrepancy was down to year end adjustments from a series of minor items including energy costs, cleaning, security and web maintenance.

“These costs just came in slightly ahead of where we thought they would be between issuing the unaudited accounts and final sign-off,” he explained.

But Mr Prattey added the company had still performed well in the context of the recession.

And with six weeks to go until the end of ACC Liverpool’s 2009/10 financial year, he said a small increase in turnover was expected with a profit in the tens of thousands.

“We expect to see that translating down to the profit line and we are expecting a modest profit in 2009/10. We are substantially ahead of where we thought we’d be in the five year plan,” he said.

The company expects to have provided around 200 conference centre event days, with more than 71,500 delegates in attendance, by its year end in March 2010.

This is down on last year’s figures (301 conference days with close to 82,500 delegates), but Mr Prattey said the the conferences being staged this year were of a much larger scale than in the previous year, resulting in increased turnover for the group.

Event days are also down at the arena – to 95 from 120 – although the number of attendees has remained relatively flat at 616,000.