Carcraft parent in the red

THE company which owns the Rochdale-based Carcraft and Webuyanycar businesses declared a pre-tax loss of £1.1m on sales of £180.6m in 16 months to September 30, 2011.

Pennine Metals A, a vehicle which acquired UK Car Group in May 2010, is owned by brothers Noel & Darren McKee, whose father Frank founded Carcraft in 1961. The company also contains property assets owned by the brothers and the fast-growing Webuyanycar.com business.

Notes to the accounts written by chief executive Noel McKee state that the directors felt the performance of the company was “acceptable, especially given the continued economic uncertainties both at home and abroad”.

“Continued focus on fit-for-purpose and scalable cost structures with continued progress in core deliverables such as gross margin, market share, cost per acquisition and stock turn have delivered results throughout the period,” he said.

The holding company contains a number of trading assets such as UK Car Group, Webuyanycar, car finance company All in One and a number of property investment firms. However, it no longer contains the CC Motorstores business, which was sold to “a non-related third party” for £128,000 after its year end.

It had net assets of £17.4m and finished the year with net debt of £7.2m – a reduction of £2.6m from the end of September 2010, with the debt paid from its own cash receipts.

Looking ahead, Mr McKee said he expected consumer confidence to improve this year, which he said would provide more opportunities.

“Our proven ability to be adaptive to demand, together with our continued clear strategy to develop flexible business models will enable the business to adapt in the changing market.”