Turnover up 23% at heating technology business

HEATING technology business Inditherm today announced a 23% rise in turnover while trimming its pre-tax losses as it pushed ahead in a challenging market.

The Rotherham-based group, which supplies heating systems for football pitches and mattresses for premature babies, saw turnover for the 12 months ended December 31 rise to £2.1m while pre-tax losses reduced from £176,000 to £93,000.

Inditherm said that after a strong start to the year which reflected an overhang of orders from the previous year, trading settled back to an underlying “flatter performance.”

“This uneven order pattern has continued, particularly in the NHS. We believe that the apparent slowing of growth is caused in the UK by ever-tightening financial constraints, particularly with regard to capital expenditure in the NHS, rather than a dampening of enthusiasm for our products,” the group said.

To offset the growth pause, the company took on distributorship of the ATOM neonatal product range, which resulted in an 11% contribution to sales revenues.

“This has shown very promising early signs and enabled us to maintain an overall growth track. In the export markets a combination of economic circumstances, national healthcare priorities and some under-performing distributors led to flat year-on-year order performance,” the group said.

“We have increased our resources and already implemented some changes to strengthen our overseas sales channels, and have already seen some encouraging signs at the start of 2014.”

Chairman Mark Abrahams said: “We expect our underlying growth in sales to continue, albeit that the uneven order flow pattern will persist. This year, given the current level of active enquiries, we anticipate income to be biased towards the second half. Inevitably this creates some uncertainty over the rate of progress we can achieve. We are applying our strengthened resources towards accelerating growth.”

Inditherm said that, as in previous years, the board intends to devote the company’s financial resources to business development and will therefore not expect to declare a dividend during its continuing development.