Coventry closure impacts on Brammer’s bottom line
INDUSTRIAL maintenance, repair and overhaul specialist Brammer has reported a dent in profits by almost a half to £17.7m from £32.9m in its preliminary results.
The company, which has a large operation in Wolverhampton, was affected by investments and one-off acquisitions during 2014.
Among these was a pre-tax operating exceptional charge of £12.6m which included restructuring costs of £5m for the closure of its Buck & Hickman National Distribution Centre in Coventry and the merger of all supply chain operations in the UK.
A further £4.5m was spent on restructuring activities in Europe as a result of acquisitions and a goodwill charge of £3.6m in respect of the Czech business in addition to a £0.5m profit from the disposal of Livingston Group.
Chief executive Ian Fraser said: “In 2014 we have continued to demonstrate our resilience while expanding our European footprint into Scandinavia.
“We have invested heavily in growth drivers to counter difficult market conditions; as a result we have enjoyed improving year on year growth rates in the last eight quarters (excluding the benefit from our Scandinavian acquisition) as our strategy of focusing on key accounts, Insites, Vending, and cross-selling initiatives continues to deliver results.
“Our continental European businesses have performed well, while the performance of our UK business has been disappointing, as previously indicated almost entirely due to a small number of large national and European key accounts reducing their spend reflecting challenging conditions in their end markets.
“We expect that our investment in growth drivers will enable us to continue to gain market share and provide good revenue and profit growth in the years to come.”
Overall, revenue grew by 11.0% with sales in the year totalling £723.6m.
