Resilient trading despite difficult circumstances for engineering company
Engineering business, C Spencer Ltd, says it has managed to delivered a positive trading performance for the year ended 31 March 2021, despite Covid related site closures inflicting severe disruption early in the year.
The Hull based company reported turnover of £42m (2020: £63m) and a pre-tax profit of £0.5m (2020: £2.2m) despite “very challenging market conditions”.
It entered the latest financial year with secured work in hand worth £53m and a pipeline worth £188m.
Since the previous business year end, the company has resolved an ongoing dispute, securing a £3.8m cash injection for works previously undertaken. This has provided a major boost to funds, enhancing working capital reserves and overall liquidity.
C Spencer Ltd says lockdown inflicted site closures in the early part of the business year resulted in very low operating levels with restrictive working practices causing delays on several projects and postponement of a number of newly-secured contracts.
However, the company adds it continues to deliver high-quality engineering solutions for its blue-chip client base in the Rail, Bridges and the Industrial sectors, delivering a number of critical infrastructure projects.
And the business now says it is looking forward to a year of “continued profitable growth.”
Charlie Spencer, founder and executive chairman of the firm, said: “Given the difficult circumstances over the past 18 months as a result of the pandemic, this is a positive set of results and our staff are to be commended for their efforts and commitment in what has been a very challenging period.
“We are now in the happy position of recruiting new staff to service our increasing order book.
“Despite the pandemic we have continued to recruit apprentices, primarily from Ron Dearing University Technical College in Hull, to join our apprenticeship programme and I am delighted to say this is having a fantastic impact on the business.
“While we will always seek to add quality people to our existing team and are currently recruiting to support our expansion, we firmly believe in growing our own engineers and leaders of the future and see the high-level apprenticeship route as being pivotal to this strategy.”
