Textiles firm hails record year of sales
TEXTILE manufacturer the Camira Group has announced a record financial performance on the back of sales to 69 countries worldwide.
The group, which has a number of North West-based customers and staff was founded in Huddersfield in 1974 as Camborne Fabrics and celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, saw its annual sales reach £60.1m in the year to the end of December 2013, up 9.3%.
The company sold 7.5m metres of contract interior fabrics – for areas such as corporate offices, universities, auditoria, and mass passenger transport for bus, coach and rail – and ended the year with operating profit of £5.3m.
In the North West its customers include office furniture manufacturers Senator International, Gresham Office Furniture and GGI.
Camira Group, with has its headquarters in Mirfield and has 500,000sq ft of manufacturing space across sites in Huddersfield, Nottingham and in Lithuania, now sells more fabrics overseas than into the UK market, with exports accounting for 60% of the group’s total turnover.
The company’s largest market is mainland Europe, which is run from its European sales office near Stuttgart, Germany, contributing more than £24m annual turnover from sales in all 28 member countries of the European Union, as well as in expanding new markets such as Turkey.
Camira Group chairman and chief executive Steve Bullas said: “Every one of our 600 strong workforce has worked extremely hard to contribute to our continued growth and profitability. We have remained profitable throughout the recession and saw a very strong final quarter of 2013 which has continued into the first half of 2014.
“We’re continuing to advance our industry leading sustainability platform and have invested heavily in additional sales and marketing resource in key markets in USA and China, as well as in Germany and Poland, and closer to home in the London design sector. We are now getting ready for another intense period of marketing activity, with trade exhibitions taking place from September in Berlin, Houston, Cologne and Birmingham, and a raft of exciting new product launches coming to market.”
